Many of the plants found in literatures since the 1700’s are no longer in existence. At least 517 of these plants have been confirmed extinct.
The mass wiping off existence, which began somewhere in the mid eighteenth century, was revealed in the first comprehensive attempt to chart worldwide plant extinctions by a team of scientists at Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.
Loss of habitat due to human activities such as use for farmland has been blamed as the leading cause of the mass extinction.
Before the revelation, it was widely believed among botanists that less than 150 species had gone extinct based on the Red List of Threatened Species. The plant analysis found Hawaii had the most recorded extinctions (79), followed by the Cape provinces of South Africa (37), with Australia, Brazil, India and Madagascar also among the top regions. However, there may well have been as many extinctions in places that have been less well studied.
The research team thinks 571 may even be lower than the actual number of lost plant species. “It is way more than we knew and way more than should have gone extinct,” said Dr Maria Vorontsova, from Kew. “It is frightening not just because of the 571 number but because I think that is a gross underestimate.”
The outlook is grim as the hope of rediscovering these lost plant is very dim. “Only a handful of the 571 lost plants are ever likely to be rediscovered, because the database includes previous rediscoveries and most of the lost species have been extinct a long time, said Aelys Humphreys also from Kew.
Species destroyed include the Chile sandalwood (Santalum fernandezianum) which was only found on one group of Pacific islands, and the St Helena olive tree (Nesiota elliptica), which only lived on the island it is named after.
