Every Scottish plant species is matched by 70 species unnoticed unnamed and undiscovered

Next time you are out and about, take a look around you. Wherever you are, there will be plants. And probably quite a few plant species. The flora of Scotland contains some 1,000 species of flowering plants with many more introduced from abroad. Which, although it might sound a lot, is a tiny percentage of what we already know to be out there. And those we are yet to discover.

While all individual Scottish plant species are important, our flora is tiny on the global scale. Scotland’s flora includes only 1 in 20 of all European plant species. Compare this with Brazil, for example, which alone harbours more than 35,000 species of flowering plant. Yet, impressive as this is, even the flora of Brazil pales in comparison to the largest flora in the world. So, where is that? As a botanist it shames me to admit that we do not know. The largest flora in the world consists of the undiscovered and undescribed species scattered across the continents. Every single Scottish plant species is matched by 70 species growing, unnoticed, unnamed and undiscovered.

At the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), we are doing our utmost to find these species. I am a taxonomist, which means I categorise plants. When a plant does not fit into an existing species, my role is to “describe” a new one. In this quest, I travel to the field – in my case South America.rbge has one of the largest concentrations of plant taxonomists in the world. Collectively, our taxonomists describe