I’m not too sure how much I should welcome the news that 180 new plant species have been discovered in the last year. Personally I have difficulty in remembering the names of plants apart from the most common that I see on a regular basis. Naturally it is good for scientific knowledge to progress so we should celebrate the achievements of the scientists at the Missouri Botanical Garden from whose website this information comes.
Scientists at the Missouri Botanical Garden discovered more than 180 new species of plants in 2015, a number which will likely represent approximately 10 percent of all new species discovered in the world last year.
Among the discoveries were 19 new species published by Dr. Charlotte Taylor. Dr. Taylor is credited with naming and describing more than 300 new species in her lifetime. She is one of the most prolific female plant name authors in history, and has worked at the Garden for more than 25 years. The majority of Taylor?s discoveries are in the Rubiaceae family, a family of flowering plants which includes coffee and quinine. Recently, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew compiled a list of the 500 most productive plant name authors since 1753. Dr. Taylor was one of only eight female scientists on that list, and is the only one still living today.
Dr. Tom Croat authored or co-authored 60 new species in 2015, all in the Araceae plant family. In total, more than 60 Garden researchers were credited as authors of new species descriptions. Beyond the new species described, Dr. John Pruski co-authored a new genus in the daisy family, Electranthera and Dr. Libing Zhang co-authored a new family of ferns,Didymochlaenaceae.
See more at Botanic Gardens Conservation International
