{"id":864,"date":"2026-08-07T04:56:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/more-than-a-fifth-of-flowering-plants-evolutionary-history-faces-extinction-landmark-study-finds\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T04:56:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:56:40","slug":"more-than-a-fifth-of-flowering-plants-evolutionary-history-faces-extinction-landmark-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/more-than-a-fifth-of-flowering-plants-evolutionary-history-faces-extinction-landmark-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"More Than a Fifth of Flowering Plants\u2019 Evolutionary History Faces Extinction, Landmark Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 For decades, conservation science has meticulously tracked the extinction risk of tigers, pangolins, and coral reefs while largely ignoring the botanical world. That blind spot vanished this spring when a landmark study in the journal Science<\/em> delivered the most comprehensive assessment ever conducted of flowering plants, revealing that 21.2% of their evolutionary history is at risk of being lost forever<\/strong> \u2014 a rate nearly double that of jawed vertebrates.<\/p>\n

A Metric Built for Animals, Redirected to Plants<\/h2>\n

The analysis relies on a tool called EDGE<\/strong> \u2014 Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered \u2014 developed by the Zoological Society of London in 2007. EDGE scores combine a species\u2019 extinction risk with its genetic uniqueness on the tree of life. For nearly two decades, the metric highlighted overlooked animals such as the aye-aye, pangolin, and axolotl \u2014 creatures representing irreplaceable evolutionary branches.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis approach has allowed conservationists to flag overlooked animals in urgent need of protection for almost two decades,\u201d said Rikki Gumbs of the Zoological Society of London, who co-led the new research. Meanwhile, plants remained \u201ccomparatively invisible \u2014 dismissed as mere backdrop for photographs of bees and tigers,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

That imbalance was not due to lower stakes but to a staggering data problem. Assessing extinction risk for an animal is complex; assessing it for roughly 335,000 species of flowering plants<\/strong> \u2014 angiosperms \u2014 proved a challenge of entirely different scale.<\/p>\n

Building a Family Tree for a Third of a Million Species<\/h2>\n

Led by F\u00e9lix Forest<\/strong>, a plant evolutionary biologist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, alongside researchers from the Zoological Society of London, Boise State University, and international partners, the team constructed a tree of life and generated extinction-risk estimates for every known flowering plant species. They assigned EDGE scores to all 335,497 angiosperms using molecular data cross-referenced against the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species<\/strong> \u2014 the largest species-prioritization assessment ever undertaken in conservation science.<\/p>\n

\u201cAngiosperms outnumber the largest previously EDGE-assessed animal group \u2014 ray-finned fish \u2014 by more than tenfold,\u201d Forest said. \u201cCompiling comparable data for flowering plants was no small task.\u201d The scores, he explained, \u201cprovide the vital information needed to spotlight irreplaceable, threatened species that conservation efforts have often overlooked.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Number That Should Worry Us: 21.2%<\/h2>\n

The headline finding is stark. The team estimates that 21.2% of angiosperm evolutionary history is threatened with extinction<\/strong> and identified 9,945 priority species<\/strong> \u2014 dubbed EDGE species \u2014 that disproportionately carry that risk. For context, the comparable rate across jawed vertebrates stands at approximately 13%.<\/p>\n

Those 9,945 species represent roughly 3% of all known flowering plants, but their evolutionary weight is disproportionate. Losing them would erase branches of the plant tree of life that took tens of millions of years to grow and can never be recovered.<\/p>\n

Sven Buerki<\/strong>, a botanist at Boise State University and study contributor, framed the disparity bluntly: \u201cMore than two in five plant species are estimated to be threatened with extinction, yet fewer than one in five has ever received a formal threat assessment \u2014 compared with over 80% of vertebrate groups. Plants have been dying in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faces of the Crisis<\/h2>\n

Among the newly flagged priority species are surprisingly familiar names. The vanilla orchid<\/strong> \u2014 source of the world\u2019s most popular dessert flavoring \u2014 now ranks among plants whose evolutionary uniqueness and endangerment demand urgent attention. It joins relatives of the corpse flower<\/strong>, whose rare, cavernous blooms draw crowds to botanical gardens.<\/p>\n

Then there is a stranger case: the jellyfish tree<\/strong> (Medusagyne oppositifolia<\/em>), found nowhere on Earth except a handful of rocky outcrops on the island of Mah\u00e9 in the Seychelles. Believed extinct until a few surviving individuals were rediscovered in the 1970s, it is the sole member of its genus, with jellyfish-shaped seed pods. Fewer than 100 mature jellyfish trees<\/strong> are thought to survive in the wild, confined to four small populations near Seychelles\u2019 coast. With no close living relatives, its loss would prune an entire limb from the angiosperm family tree.<\/p>\n

Other headline cases include Amborella trichopoda<\/em>, a modest New Caledonian shrub whose evolutionary lineage split from all other flowering plants some 130 million years ago<\/strong> \u2014 making it the single most evolutionarily distinct angiosperm alive today.<\/p>\n

A Roadmap, Not Just an Obituary<\/h2>\n

Despite the grim arithmetic, the study\u2019s authors frame it as a tool for triage. The researchers calculate that protecting just 5.9% of species<\/strong>, selected by EDGE ranking, would safeguard half of all threatened angiosperm evolutionary history. Protecting the full EDGE list would preserve 16.6% of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith finite conservation budgets and infinite need, EDGE scores offer a way to triage resources toward the species whose loss would cost evolutionary history the most,\u201d Gumbs said.<\/p>\n

Some translation from data to action is already underway. Buerki said his team aims to fold the results directly into Flora of the World<\/strong>, an online platform, so that anyone searching for a species can see not only where it grows, but how evolutionarily irreplaceable and endangered it is. At Kew, the EDGE metric has already begun shaping decisions inside the institution\u2019s Living Collections<\/strong>, guiding which specimens horticulturists prioritize for cultivation and seed-banking.<\/p>\n

Why It Matters Beyond the Greenhouse<\/h2>\n

The paper\u2019s authors situate their findings within a broader argument: global biodiversity policy has consistently treated evolutionary diversity as worth protecting, yet plants were left out of the assessments meant to operationalize that principle. That taxonomic imbalance, they argue, has undermined plant conservation for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlowers and forests were never simply scenery,\u201d Gumbs said. \u201cThey are running out of time on their own terms \u2014 and now, for the first time, science has the numbers to prove it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The animals typically pictured on conservation reports \u2014 pandas, polar bears, tigers \u2014 depend entirely on the quieter, rootier world sustaining them. This study offers not just a diagnosis, but a roadmap: for the first time, conservationists know exactly which botanical branches to save. The question is whether the world will act before they fall.<\/p>\n

flower bouquet delivery<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 For decades, conservation science has meticulously tracked the extinction risk of tigers, pangolins, and coral reefs while largely ignoring the botanical world. That blind spot vanished this spring when a landmark study in the journal Science delivered the most comprehensive assessment ever conducted of flowering plants, revealing that 21.2% of their evolutionary history […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sentimentflowers.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}