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Through two examples of artworks, both historical and contemporary, water-colour and installation, this article considers possibilities for art-based research to ground new narratives of ‘plantness’ in botanic garden design. In so doing the author suggests that art can open windows on a little-known world; and confront the human viewer with narratives that provoke them to re-calibrate their ideas about, and feelings towards, plants. Thus, questions are also asked of landscape architecture and the ways in which it might respond to such art-based research works and considers emergent questions for design practices wishing to make ‘Life as Plant’ more public and specific.

How much progress has North America made toward the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) Target 8 of at least 75% of threatened plant species in accessible ex situ collections by 2020? To answer this, the North American Collections Assessment was carried out in 2010. More than 200 botanical and conservation institutions in the United States, Canada, and Mexico contributed taxa lists to the Botanic Gardens Conservation International's (BGCI) online PlantSearch database for this assessment. By cross-referencing collection information with globally threatened species lists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), NatureServe, and Mexico's Red List, we found that approximately 35% of North America's nearly 5000 most threatened taxa are currently in ex situ collections. This marks considerable progress toward the GSPC Target 8, but there is clearly much more to do. Future priorities include collaboratively and strategically increasing threatened species representation in collections and assessing genetic diversity among collections by comparing accession-level data.

Orchids are diverse, occur in a wide range of habitats and dominate threatened species lists, but which orchids are threatened, where and by what? Using the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, we assessed the range and diversity of threats to orchids globally including identifying four threat syndromes: (1) terrestrial orchids in forests that are endemic to a country and threatened by illegal collecting; (2) orchids threatened by climate change, pollution, transportation and disturbance/development for tourism, and recreation activities, often in East Asia; (3) epiphytic orchids in Sub-Saharan Africa including Madagascar with diverse threats; and (4) South and Southeast Asia orchids threatened by land clearing for shifting agriculture. Despite limitations in the Red List data, the results highlight how conservation efforts can focus on clusters of co-occurring threats in regions while remaining aware of the trifecta of broad threats from plant collecting, land clearing and climate change.

A collection of cultivated Liriope and Ophiopogon plants was established in 1996–1998 and subsequently hosted at a horticultural college. Uncertainties about the identification of the accessions, compounded by potential errors in propagation and labelling have led to waning confidence in the identities of the plants in the collection. The potential for using DNA barcoding to determine the species identities of the accessions was investigated. The DNA barcode regions of the plastid ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit gene (rbcL) and nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (nrITS) were amplified. DNA sequence analysis allowed the sequences of the accessions to be compared to reference sequences in public databases. A simple haplotype map of the characteristic polymorphic positions in the rbcL regions was used to clearly distinguish between the two genera and assign Ophiopogon accessions to individual species or sub-groups of species. The ITS sequence data confirmed these genus and species assignations and provided greater resolution to distinguish between closely related species. The combination of two DNA barcodes allowed most of the accessions to be assigned to individual species. This molecular verification confirmed the identity of about 70% of the accessions, with the remaining 30% demonstrating a range of mistaken identities at the species and genus levels.

The idea that plants have a mind of their own has been a prominent feature of some Indigenous narratives, literary works, and philosophical discourses. Recent scientific research in the field of plant cognition similarly highlights the capacity of botanical life to discern between options and learn from prior experiences or, in other words, to think. The Mind of Plants offers an accessible account of the idea of \"the plant mind\" by bringing together short essays and poems on plants and their interactions with humans. The texts interpret the theme broadly-from the ways that humans mind and unmind plants to the mindedness or unmindedness of plants themselves. Authors from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences have written about their personal connections to particular plants, reflecting upon their research on plant studies in a style amenable to a broad audience. Each of the authors has selected a plant that functions as a guiding thread to their interpretation of \"the mind of plants.\" From the ubiquitous rose to the ugly hornwort, from the Amazonian ayahuasca to tobacco, the texts reflect the multifarious interactions between humans and flora. These personal narratives, filled with anecdotes, experiences, and musings, offer cutting-edge insights into the different meanings and dimensions of \"the mind of plants.\" Contributors to The Mind of Plants are key figures in the fields of ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, plant behavior and cognition, and critical plant studies. Included are simple, thumbnail-style, black-and-white illustrations of the plants to enhance readers' appreciation of the narratives.

Despite the importance of species discovery, the processes including collecting, recognizing, and describing new species are poorly understood. Data are presented for flowering plants, measuring quantitatively the lag between the date a specimen of a new species was collected for the first time and when it was subsequently described and published. The data from our sample of new species published between 1970 and 2010 show that only 16% were described within five years of being collected for the first time. The description of the remaining 84% involved much older specimens, with nearly one-quarter of new species descriptions involving specimens > 50 y old. Extrapolation of these results suggest that, of the estimated 70,000 species still to be described, more than half already have been collected and are stored in herbaria. Effort, funding, and research focus should, therefore, be directed as much to examining extant herbarium material as collecting new material in the field.

The contributions of crop wild relatives (CWR) to food security depend on their conservation and accessibility for use. The United States contains a diverse native flora of CWR, including those of important cereal, fruit, nut, oil, pulse, root and tuber, and vegetable crops, which may be threatened in their natural habitats and underrepresented in plant conservation repositories. To determine conservation priorities for these plants, we developed a national inventory, compiled occurrence information, modeled potential distributions, and conducted threat assessments and conservation gap analyses for 600 native taxa. We found that 7.1% of the taxa may be critically endangered in their natural habitats, 50% may be endangered, and 28% may be vulnerable. We categorized 58.8% of the taxa as of urgent priority for further action, 37% as high priority, and 4.2% as medium priority. Major ex situ conservation gaps were identified for 93.3% of the wild relatives (categorized as urgent or high priority), with 83 taxa absent from conservation repositories, while 93.1% of the plants were equivalently prioritized for further habitat protection. Various taxonomic richness hotspots across the US represent focal regions for further conservation action. Related needs include facilitating greater access to and characterization of these cultural-genetic-natural resources and raising public awareness of their existence, value, and plight.

To determine if the temporal and spatial pattern of alien plant invasion and native plant expansion can be observed using 100 years of herbarium data from Oklahoma, USA, and to eliminate herbarium collection biases in such analyses. Oklahoma, USA. Using herbarium records from the Oklahoma Vascular Plants Database from 1903 to 2004, we reconstructed the spatial and temporal collection history of two alien invasive taxa (Lonicera japonica and Tamarix spp.) and three native expansive species (Ambrosia psilostachya, Amphiachyris dracunculoides and Juniperus virginiana). To compare the overall collecting trend, groups of native non-expansive taxa were selected as counterparts. We recorded the year of the first collection in each township in Oklahoma for all taxa. The cumulative number of occupied townships was log-transformed, plotted against time and modelled with linear regression. The slope of the linear regression represented collection trend over time for the non-expansive counterpart group. However, for the invasive and expansive species, the regression slope represented the collection effort plus the invasion or expansion rate. We calculated the proportion of invasive and expansive species to non-expansive species by dividing the cumulative number of townships for each invasive or expansive species by the cumulative number of townships occupied by the counterpart group (proportion curve). Maps of the collection records of invasive and expansive taxa illustrated no discernible spatial invasion or expansion pattern. The slopes of the linear regression for alien invasive taxa were significantly steeper than those of their associated native non-expansive counterparts, indicating an increase in abundance. Juniperus virginiana, L. japonica and Tamarix spp. exhibited one or more periods during which they were collected at a disproportionately higher rate than their native non-expansive counterparts. Patterns of species invasion and expansion in Oklahoma were detected using techniques developed for regions with longer collecting plant histories. The proportion curve analysis eliminated some biases inherent in herbarium data by reducing the effect of collecting effort. Both the regression model and proportion curve analyses illustrate the temporal invasion patterns of alien invasive species. The native species did not show a clear expansion pattern. The information found in recently established herbaria may not be sensitive enough to detect the increase in abundance of native species.

Detecting range shifts and contractions is critical for determining the conservation priority of rare and declining taxa. However, data on rare species occurrences frequently lack precise information on locations and habitats and may present a biased picture of biogeographic distributions and presumed habitat preferences. Herbarium or museum specimen data, which otherwise could be useful proxies for detecting temporal trends and spatial patterns in species distributions, pose particular challenges. Using data from herbaria and Natural Heritage Programs on numbers of occurrences within individual municipalities (towns, cities, or townships), we quantified temporal changes in the estimated distributions of 110 rare plant species in the six New England (USA) states. We used the partial Solow equation and a nonparametric test to estimate the probability of observing multiple absences (gaps in the collection record) if a given population was actually still extant. Bayes' Theorem was used to estimate the probability that occurrences were misclassified as extinct. Using the probabilities obtained from these three methods, we eliminated taxa with high probabilities of pseudo-absence (that would yield an inaccurate profile of species distributions), narrowing the set for final analysis to 71 taxa. We then expressed occurrences as centroids of town polygons and estimated current and historical range areas (extents of occurrence as defined by α-hulls inscribing occurrences), mean distances between occurrences, and latitudinal and longitudinal range boundaries. Using a geographic information system, we modeled first, second, and third circular standard deviational polygons around the mean center of the historical range. Examining the distribution of current occurrences within each standard deviational polygon, we asked whether ranges were collapsing to a center, expanding, fragmenting, or contracting to a margin of the former range. Extant ranges of the species were, on average, almost 67% smaller than their historical ranges, and distances among occurrences decreased. Five New England hotspots were observed to contain >35% of rare plant populations. Extant occurrences were more frequently marginalized at the periphery of the historical range than would be expected by chance. Coarse-grained data on current and historical occurrences can be used to examine large suites of species to prioritize taxa and sites for conservation.

Globally, ultramafic outcrops are renowned for hosting floras with high levels of endemism, including plants with specialised adaptations such as nickel or manganese hyperaccumulation. Soils derived from ultramafic regoliths are generally nutrient-deficient, have major cation imbalances, and have concomitant high concentrations of potentially phytotoxic trace elements, especially nickel. The South and Southeast Asian region has the largest surface occurrences of ultramafic regoliths in the world, but the geoecology of these outcrops is still poorly studied despite severe conservation threats. Due to the paucity of systematic plant collections in many areas and the lack of georeferenced herbarium records and databased information, it is not possible to determine the distribution of species, levels of endemism, and the species most threatened. However, site-specific studies provide insights to the ultramafic geoecology of several locations in South and Southeast Asia. The geoecology of tropical ultramafic regions differs substantially from those in temperate regions in that the vegetation at lower elevations is generally tall forest with relatively low levels of endemism. On ultramafic mountaintops, where the combined forces of edaphic and climatic factors intersect, obligate ultramafic species and hyperendemics often occur. Forest clearing, agricultural development, mining, and climate change-related stressors have contributed to rapid and unprecedented loss of ultramafic-associated habitats in the region. The geoecology of the large ultramafic outcrops of Indonesia’s Sulawesi, Obi and Halmahera, and many other smaller outcrops in South and Southeast Asia, remains largely unexplored, and should be prioritised for study and conservation.