Why conserve wild plants?

All our food and much of our medicine comes first from plants. In defiance of responsible aims and aesthetic pleasure we destroy meadows, wetlands, heaths, grassland, bogs and hedgerows, and the wild plants which they contain.

When those plants go, the genes holding the diversity of life are lost, the birds, animals and insects cease to survive, and humankind's own future is endangered. Yet, at present the devastation continues.

Plants are one of the fundamental building blocks of life on Earth, which could not exist without them. The health and diversity of wild plants is a primary indicator of our husbandry of the environment as a whole.

Wild plants add beauty to the landscape in general and form the fabric of the countryside, and the loss of beautiful places, like meadows of wild flowers, must be reversed.

One quarter of western medicine's prescribed drugs, and as many as half of the 25 top-selling drugs, derive from compounds discovered first in plants. Every year new and often life-saving extracts are discovered in wild plants. Plants also provide natural fibres for clothes, materials for building and other products, and in the future may be a source of as-yet-undiscovered, environmentally sustainable, raw materials.

All crops have developed from what were once wild plants. The genetic diversity needed to sustain healthy food crops in the future, is contained today in the wild relatives of our cereals, pulses, fruit and vegetables.

Why conserve plants in their natural habitat?

Many botanical gardens hold collections of plants, so why does Plantlife International think it is vital to conserve plants in the wild?

Firstly, plants in their natural habitats have a beauty and a resonance that can scarcely be hinted at in a garden or a greenhouse; no-one who has seen a field of wild daffodils or orchids, or a woodland carpeted with bluebells, could doubt this.

Secondly, as we understand more about the genetic diversity of wild plants, we realise why only a tiny fraction of this precious diversity can ever be captured in a seed-bank or a garden.

Wild plants contain the genetic resources which will enable them to adapt to changing environments in the future, and to continue to be the treasure house of medicines, food, fabrics and fuels that they have always been.

In the wild, plant species evolve with their environment, both influencing it and influenced by it. In the botanical garden, plants are subject to selection by gardener, cold frame and flowerbed.

Plantlife believes that if we wish for more than a museum in which to house the domesticated ghosts of our once wild plants, we must save them in their natural environment.

Wild plants are under severe pressure, including poor forestry management, agriculture, increasing pressure through tourism growth, urbanisation and road building. Whilst, worldwide, it is estimated that up to one third of all vascular plants are threatened with extinction.

 

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