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At the end of 1996 the IUCN announced that 33,730 species of plant are threatened with extinction. Should we care?
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At the end of 1996 the IUCN announced that 33,730 species of plant are threatened with extinction. Should we care? "In one of our religious books it is written that the tree is like ten sons. It gives ten valuable things: oxygen, water, energy, food, clothes, timber, medicinal herbs, fodder flowers and shade." (Chipko leader, Sunderlal Bahaguna) Plants are essential to life on earth. They have the unique ability to fix carbon and synthesise all the primary metabolites essential for biosynthesis; for example, the 20 amino acids necessary for life. About 4 million species on earth rely upon the 380,000 species of plant (consisting of 250,000 higher plants) for survival (Green Inheritance, 1984). This number is not certain - estimates have been as low as 345,000 for species already named and described (Cronquist, 1981) and as high as 630,000 for species described plus an estimate of still unnamed and undescribed species (Schultes, 1972;...
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