Kew and IUCN made a splash today with the Sampled Red List Index for Plants. A representative sample of 7,000 species of plants was selected from the comprehensive IUCN Red List Index for detailed monitoring. ((We’ll draw a discrete veil over Nature referring to gymnosperms as “seed-bearing plants,” tout court.)) You can contribute to the Sampled Red List in a wiki-like environment, and follow its progress on the inevitable blog. An interactive map allows some basic exploration of the data. The headline number is that 25% of plant species are threatened. There are various crop wild relatives among the 7,000 species, ((Though not Vavilovia.)) so it might be possible to calculate some statistics for that particular category, to complement other efforts.
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