Despite centuries of research and exploration to create a complete inventory of the world’s plant life, there may be as many as 100,000 plant species that are not yet known to science, waiting to be cataloged — if we can find and describe them in time. Art collectors of Art Kabinett network spend many hours perusing the Latin terms in their pricey botany litho's and drawings.
The requirement to use Latin — which has been in place, officially, since 1908, and in practice since the 18th century — doesn’t make this process any faster. It is also quite distressing to students learning their flora.
At a time when deforestation, the spread of invasive species and climate change are putting as many as one-third of all plant species at risk of extinction in the next 50 years, we may not have time for traditions like these.
That’s why, as of Jan. 1, 2012, the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature no longer compels botanists to provide a Latin description of a new species. Latin class for Botanists is now cancelled indefinitely.
Perhaps even more significant, the code now recognizes publication in online academic journals as equally valid as print publication. Both changes will help to speed up the race to catalog the world’s plant life.
No longer will botanists have to write sentences like: “Arbor usque ad 6 m alta. Folia decidua; lamina oblanceolata vel elliptica-oblongata, 2-7 cm longa."
Instead, you may now simply write "Bourreria motaguensis, a six-meter-tall tree with deciduous leaves 2 to 7 centimeters long".
Simplifying the process for describing and publishing new species will undoubtedly help, but cataloging all our planet’s plant life will require much more than that.
Plants are a vital source of materials and medicine; they are the basis of the food chain; they produce the oxygen we breathe. If a species becomes extinct before it is found — a phenomenon known as “anonymous extinction” — there is no way to explore its potential. We must prevent that from happening.
That will take concerted efforts to conduct research expeditions to the parts of the tropics that still remain unexplored, to generate financial support for the scientists needed to do the work and to train a new generation of botanists. They will have enough to do without having to memorize Latin declensions.
