Urban woodland at twilight

Vitally important existing herbaria information needs analysing.

A new piece of research published this week points clearly to the importance of fully utilising EXISTING information. Evidence-based medicine, social policy, environmental science, or, indeed forestry, is focussed on the bsiness of analysing and synthesising existing information as a necessary part of policy-making or steering future research needs.

This meticulous piece of research on herbaria calls for similar emphasis on the ‘quiet’ and underfunded task of understanding what we have already collected.

Of the estimated 70,000 species of flowering plants yet to be described by scientists, more than half may already have been collected but are lying unknown and unrecognised in collections around the world, a new study suggests.

The work shows that it currently takes on average 30-40 years from the time a flowering plant specimen is collected to it being recognised and described as a new species. 

A report of the research appears this week in PNAS.

‘Many people think that discovering new species is primarily about expeditions to exotic locations and collecting new specimens, but the truth is that thousands of new plant species are lying unidentified in cupboards, drawers and cabinets around the world,’ said Dr Robert Scotland of Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences, an author of the report. 

From University of Oxford News