Cupboards Home To Over 35,000 New Plant Species

Tue, 07 Dec 2010

A team of UK botanists have claimed that thousands of new species of flowering plants may be lying undiscovered in cupboards around the world.

The team, led Robert Scotland of the University of Oxford, looked at how long it takes for new species collected in the field and stored in plant vaults called 'herbaria' to be identified.

After analysing hundreds of flowering plant species they found it often took decades for species to be discovered.

They concluded that 47 per cent to 66 per cent of the 70,000 flowering plants that are yet to be found have already been collected and are awaiting identification.

Scotland said expeditions are still important for finding new plants but thinks more resources should be devoted to maintain herbaria, as well as to training scientists to find the finding hidden species lurking within them.

He wrote: "When the final plant collections have been made from the more inaccessible parts of the world herbarium cabinets will still represent a final frontier for the discovery of a large number of new species of flowering plant."
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