We are witnessing the unprecedented collision of deep time—the time of species evolution and the formation of complex mutualistic and other relationships—with the historical time of human-induced climate change and habitat destruction.
Plants are fundamental to our sense of place, and their gradual disappearance not only disrupts the ecosystems on which we rely for survival, but also deeply ingrained forms of spiritual and communal belonging that we mourn.
The observation – from among scientists, artists, humanists, and horticulturists – that plants are relatively neglected in the rhetoric of extinction, seems surprising, given that plants, through their photosynthetic alchemy, supply the conditions for almost all other forms of life on earth.
None of us can opt out of our fundamental dependence on the energy they provide.
Yet conservation is focused disproportionately on the charismatic megafauna – tigers, elephants, pandas (refer here to top endangered species of the world )
that themselves are fundamentally reliant—directly or indirectly—on the plants of the ecosystems they inhabit. This obliviousness to plants persists even as historians and cultural critics have become interested in the social, ethical, and emotional aspects of extinction. A recent special issue of a premier journal of environmental history, for instance, calls on historians and scientists to join forces in the study of extinction, yet the editorial does not refer to a single plant.1 Likewise, two important extinction studies published in the last decade contain, among them, a single essay focused on a plant.2
One reason for this relative neglect may be the ubiquity of plants: they constitute approximately four-fifths of all living matter on earth.3
But at a time of accelerated habitat destruction and climate change, the seemingly endless variety of plants is being eroded, resulting in local extirpation and sometimes complete elimination.
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