Nearly half of all plants could be wiped out in ‘age of extinction’

By Adam Vaughan

The St Helena Olive tree (Nesiota elliptica) went extinct in 2003

Rebecca Cairns-Wicks

Forty per cent of Earth’s plants are at risk of extinction, twice as many as previously thought, while many fungi are also under threat.

“We are living in an age of extinction,” says Alexandre Antonelli at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London. Kew’s latest annual report on the state of the world’s plants has found that the number one threat to plants is farming.

The jump from 20 per cent of plants at risk in 2016 to 40 per cent now is not because of …