AFP Google News 29 Dec 10;
PARIS — Capping the UN's International Year of Biodiversity, botanists in Britain and the United States on Wednesday unveiled a library of plant names aimed at helping conservationists, drug designers and agriculture researchers.
The database, accessible at www.theplantlist.org, identifies 1.25 million names for plants, ranging from essential food crops such as wheat, rice and corn to garden roses and exotic jungle ferns, and provides links to published research.
The aim is to clear up a century-old taxonomic jumble in which non-standard names sowed ignorance, rivalry and sometimes damaging confusion about the world's plant wealth.
"Without accurate names, understanding and communication about global plant life would descend into inefficient chaos, costing vast sums of money and threatening lives in the case of plants used for food or medicine," Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) said.
The project brought together scores of experts at RBG's famous Kew Gardens in London with the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.
It traces its origins to a 1999 botanical congress which called for a clear picture of plant biodiversity to help preserve species under threat.
The Plant List is described as a working list that will require finetuning.
"(It) is really a major step forward," said Peter Wyse Jackson, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
"It provides for the first time a basic checklist of what plants there are on the planet, and it can be used for so many purposes, planning conservation, action looking at the economic importance of plants and so on."
Of the 1.25 million names, 1.04 million are of species rank while the remainder are "infraspecific," meaning they are families or sub-groups of species.
The longest name is Ornithogalum adseptentrionesvergentulum, for a group of species that includes the ?Star of Bethlehem? plant. The shortest names include Poa fax, or scaly poa, a purplish flower native to Western Australia.
Only 300,000 names for species have been accepted as standard terms by the experts, and 480,000 others have been deemed "synonyms," or alternatives to accepted names.
A whopping 260,000 names are "unresolved," meaning that data is too sketchy to determine swiftly whether the claim for a new plant find is backed by the facts. This part of the list will be whittled down by experts over the years to come.
Under a plan adopted in Nagoya, Japan, last October, members of the UN's Biodiversity Convention agreed to set up a complete plant database by 2020.
One in five of the world's known plant species is under threat of extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in September.
Habitat loss, climate change, pollution and invasive species are the major perils.
Plant list weeds out mass naming duplications
Ben Webster The Times The Australian 30 Dec 10;
LIFE on Earth is less diverse than we have been led to believe, with a review of the world's million named plants able to confirm only a third of them as unique.
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, south west London, has updated a project conceived 130 years ago by Charles Darwin to identify every plant known to science.
But it found that the list, which was started in the 1880s with the help of a bequest from the great naturalist of 250 pounds a year for five years, was largely made up of repetitions. Hundreds of botanists thought that they had discovered new species but they were naming previously identified plants.
Kew, working with the Missouri Botanical Garden in the US, found that a sub-species of English Oak had been "discovered" 168 times. The Plant List, published online yesterday, also weeds out 51 synonyms for the common beech, 29 for the common daisy and 26 for the bluebell. The giant sequoia, native of Sierra Nevada in California, has been named 18 times by different botanists.
By painstakingly comparing entries, Kew found 300,000 unique species and 480,000 synonyms of those species. Another 260,000 names are listed as "unresolved", meaning that botanists have so far been unable to determine whether they are a separate species or a duplication of one of the 300,000.
Families of plants with the highest proportion of unresolved names include the umbellifers, such as carrot and celery, the cactus family and the solanaceae family, which includes the potato and tomato.
Kew found 17,844 different names for hawkweeds but decided that 8,000 of these were synonyms. It has so far identified 1,411 different species of hawkweed but says that it needs to do more work on another 8,000 names to determine whether they are unique.
Researchers at Kew said that the lack of a definitive list of all plants had held back conservation efforts and prevented institutions from sharing information on the same plant. By identifying the synonyms for each plant, the Kew study has enabled scientists anywhere in the world to gain access to all the research conducted into a particular species.
Conservation bodies are expected to use the list to focus their efforts on truly endangered species rather than wasting resources protecting plants that may be rare in one place but abundant in another. Kew reviewed the "Red List" of threatened plants of Botswana and found that six of the names listed there were actually synonyms of other plants that were not threatened.
The linking of different names for the same plant is also likely to help medical research. Mu Xiang, a plant widely used in traditional Chinese medicine, has five synonyms. Kew said that health regulators in different areas would now be able to share information on the remedy.
A Kew spokesman said: "Without accurate names, understanding and communication about global plant life would descend into inefficient chaos, costing vast sums of money and threatening lives in the case of plants used for food or medicine. The Plant List provides a way of linking the different scientific names used for a particular species together, thus meeting the needs of the conservation community by providing reliable names for all communication about plants and their uses."
Eimear Nic Lughadha, the Kew scientist who led the Plant List project, said: "We can now pull all the information together on the same plant and plot on a map where it occurs. This enables us to decide quickly which species are most threatened."
She said that the original list, funded by Darwin and published a century ago under the title Index Kewensis, had simply been a list of 400,000 names, with little effort to remove duplication. An average of 6,000 names had been added every year since it was first published, with many new names describing plants already listed. "It was difficult to cross-check before the internet existed. This [duplication] happens much less often now," she added.
US, UK scientists draw up list of world's plants
Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Yahoo News 29 Dec 10;
LONDON – British and U.S. scientists say they've compiled the most comprehensive list of land plant species ever published — a 300,000-species strong compendium that they hope will boost conservation, trade and medicine.
The list, drawn up by researchers at Kew Gardens in London and the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, is intended to help resolve one of botany's most basic problems: Figuring out which plants go by what name.
Some plants have been labeled differently by researchers operating in different countries over the past century, while in other cases the different variants of the same plant have been erroneously identified as belonging to different species. There are also cases in which plants names' have been applied mistakenly, or just misspelled.
Although a rose by any other name may still smell as sweet, scientists say that attaching different labels to the same plant can rob researchers of the chance to get the information they need.
"If you only know it by one of its many names you only get part of the story," said Eimear Nic Lughadha, the senior scientist at Kew responsible for the list.
It's a problem that frustrates everyone from agricultural regulators to pharmaceutical researchers.
"Imagine trying to find everything that's ever been published about a plant: Which chemicals are in it, whether it's poisonous or not, where is it found," said Alan Paton, one of Nic Lughadha's colleagues at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. "To find that information, you need to know all of the different scientific names that have been used for it."
The plant compendium aims to clear up that confusion by putting all the various names in one place — and sorting out which ones apply to which plant. To that end researchers in the U.S. and Britain have been scooping up existing databases — with names such as GrassBase and iPlants — and combining them with checklists from organizations such as the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families and The International Legume Database and Information Service.
Kew's final list carries more than 1 million scientific names, of which 300,000 are accepted names for plant species. Another 480,000 are additional names, or synonyms, for those species. The rest are unresolved — they could apply to a previously identified plant, or they could describe a different organism altogether.
Botanists are still working their way through the backlog of unassigned names.
"Finishing that list will be a long task," Nic Lughadha said. "And, of course, new species are being described all the time."
Missouri Botanical Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, announce the Plant List
Accomplishment fundamental to plant conservation efforts worldwide
Missouri Botanical Garden EurekAlert 29 Dec 10;
(ST. LOUIS): As the 2010 United Nations International Year of Biodiversity comes to a close, the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) announce the completion of The Plant List. This landmark international resource is a working list of all land plant species(1), fundamental to understanding and documenting plant diversity and effective conservation of plants. The completion of The Plant List accomplishes Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which called for a widely accessible working list of known plant species as a step towards a complete world flora. The Plant List can be accessed by visiting www.theplantlist.org.
"The on-time completion of The Plant List is a significant accomplishment for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Missouri Botanical Garden, and our partners worldwide," said Professor Stephen Hopper, Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. "This is crucial to planning, implementing and monitoring plant conservation programs around the world."
Without accurate names, understanding and communication about global plant life would descend into inefficient chaos, costing vast sums of money and threatening lives in the case of plants used for food or medicine. The Plant List provides a way of linking the different scientific names used for a particular species together, thus meeting the needs of the conservation community by providing reliable names for all communication about plants and their uses.
The Plant List includes 1.25 million scientific plant names, of which 1.04 million are names of species rank. Of the species names included in The Plant List, about 300,000 (29 percent) are accepted names for species and about 480,000 (46 percent) are recorded as synonyms of those species. The status of the remaining 260,000 names is "unresolved" since the contributing data sets do not contain sufficient evidence to decide whether they should be accepted names or synonyms. The Plant List includes a further 204,000 scientific plant names of infraspecific taxonomic rank linked to those species names. These numbers will change in the future as data quality improves.
"All validly published names for plants to the level of species have been included in The Plant List, the majority of them synonyms; no names have been deleted," said Dr. Peter H. Raven, President Emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden.
Since 2008, botanists and information technology specialists at MBG and RBG Kew have been developing and testing an innovative new approach to generating The Plant List. The approach involved merging existing names and synonymy relationships from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew's World Checklist of Selected Plant Families with over one million plant names from Tropicos®, which has been the Missouri Botanical Garden's main online taxonomic resource since 1982.
Researchers and specialists used names and synonymy relationships from regional floras and checklists and worked out a rules-based approach(2) to merge them with RBG Kew's records into The Plant List. The project has relied on collaboration with other botanists and their institutions around the world working towards GSPC Target 1; major contributions have come from The International Compositae Alliance (www.compositae.org), International Legume Database & Information Service (www.ildis.org) and The International Plant Names Index (www.ipni.org).
"This is a breakthrough," said Chuck Miller, Vice President of Information Systems at the Missouri Botanical Garden. "By capturing taxonomic knowledge into a rulebase, computers could be employed to aid the task of sorting out the millions of plant name records assembled over the past two decades in Tropicos®, the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families and other sources to produce this product that achieves the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation Target 1."
The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) was first proposed at the XVI International Botanical Congress in St. Louis in 1999. It was adopted in April 2002 by the Convention on Biological Diversity as a guide and framework for plant conservation policies and priorities worldwide at all levels. The GSPC consists of a plan containing 16 targets to address the loss of plant species around the world. At the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010, an updated plan was adopted for the period of 2011 through 2020 with updated targets. The first three objectives of the new Global Strategy for Plant Conservation are that plant diversity is well understood, documented and recognized; plant diversity is urgently and effectively conserved; and plant diversity is used in a sustainable and equitable manner. The completion of The Plant List is a significant step towards the new GSPC Target 1 – to create an online flora of all known plants by 2020.
"Having an accurate and comprehensive list of the world's flora will be a fundamental requirement to underpin future plant conservation efforts," said Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson, President, Missouri Botanical Garden. "The Plant List provides this new resource and will be widely used and much welcomed. Meeting this important GSPC target for 2010 represents a remarkable achievement for all those involved and provides the basis on which we can build towards the newly adopted 2020 target."
"For anyone that depends upon reliable information about plants, including professionals working in health, food and agriculture or rural development, The Plant List represents a significant information product," said Bob Allkin, Information Project Manager, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. "It will enable such professionals to find all published research about a given plant regardless of which name was used in those publications."
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With scientists working in 38 countries on six continents around the globe, the Missouri Botanical Garden has one of the three largest plant science programs in the world. Its mission is "to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life." The Garden focuses its work on areas that are rich in biodiversity yet threatened by habitat destruction, and operates the world's most active research and training programs in tropical botany. Garden scientists collaborate with local institutions, schools and indigenous peoples to understand plants, create awareness, offer alternatives and craft conservation strategies. The Missouri Botanical Garden is striving for a world that can sustain us without sacrificing prosperity for future generations, a world where people share a commitment to managing biological diversity for the common benefit. Today, 151 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a National Historic Landmark and a center for science, conservation, education and horticultural display.
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world-famous scientific organization, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the U.K. and around the world. Kew Gardens is also a major international visitor attraction. Its landscaped 132 hectares and Kew's country estate, Wakehurst Place, attract nearly 2 million visitors every year. Kew was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2009. Wakehurst Place is home to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, the largest wild plant seed bank in the world. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and its partners have collected and conserved seed from 10 percent of the world's wild flowering plant species (c. 30, 000 species) and aim to conserve 25 percent by 2020.
