Botanists have believed for quite some time that over a million types of flowering plants were spread across the earth. But next time you check their list, it might be missing 60%. Before you go pointing fingers at deforestation and extinction, you might want to know that it’s actually duplicate entries.
Researchers in Britain plan on weeding through the list to create a more accurate catalog. At the end, they expect only 400,000 to remain out of the current 1,000,000.
A keeper at the Gardens explained how the list has plagued botanists with a lack of information.
On average, one plant might have between two and three names, which doesn’t sound a great deal, but if you’re trying to find information on a plant, you might not find all [of it] because you’re only looking at one name. That’s even more critical for economically useful plants: because they are more used, they tend to have more names.
