In 2009, botanist Naomi Fraga was searching for an unnamed flower near Carson City, Nevada. She witnessed in real time how the plant was disappearing as its desert valley habitat was bulldozed to make way for Walmart and housing developments. But she needed to give it a name so she could seek legal protection.
The tiny yellow flower is called the Carson Valley Monkey Flower, or more formally known as Erythranthe carsonensis, and conservationists can now petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect it under the Endangered Species Act. If the petition is approved, it could go from obscurity to vital importance, at least as far as Western science is concerned, in less than a generation.
Taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying living things, is fundamental to protecting extinct plants and animals. But the field is often viewed as an outdated, dusty tradition reminiscent of the days when intrepid 19th-century botanists described the plants of newly colonized lands and is in decline. Decades after the taxonomy frenzy of 1830-1920, when Western scientists ventured deep into far-flung parts of the world, molecular genetics revolutionized our ability to classify species and began to siphon off funding, while the analog field of taxonomy was left to languish.
Gene sequencing has enabled us to identify the basic building blocks of life, but we need to be able to interpret genetic data in ways that humans can understand and use. That's the job of taxonomy. We need to reinvest in this science if we want to save what's left of the vast diversity of life on Earth. How we distinguish species will determine what we save.
The dire state of taxonomy in the United States may be best illustrated by the “Flora of North America,” a definitive 30-volume attempt to name and describe every plant species here and in Canada. The project began in the 1980s but has yet to be completed, as contributors struggled to secure ongoing funding. It will soon need to be revised before the final volume is completed in 2026. For example, the first volume on ferns, released in 1993, is completely outdated as new species have been discovered and non-native species have been introduced. Imagine trying to understand your 2024 Camry with a 1993 manual. That's what botanists and conservationists trying to preserve biodiversity are grappling with.
Flora of North America has been a victim of major shifts in national scientific priorities. The National Science Foundation is the primary funder of botany in the United States. But since the 1980s and 1990s, its funding has been increasingly directed toward hypothesis-driven, laboratory-based research. When Flora of North America contributors ask university botanists to collaborate on projects, they often have to do so unpaid.
Much of the work of taxonomy is done in herbaria, which function as libraries and are usually housed at universities or botanical gardens. Indeed, many undiscovered species are probably already hiding in herbaria as unnamed specimens. But even herbaria are now underfunded; Duke University recently ended its support for one of the largest collections in the country, citing the high maintenance costs.
I see this and other evidence of the gradual decline of taxonomy as a tragedy. I'm enrolled in a graduate program in botany at the University of Vermont, and the act of naming a plant has always felt like a kind of interspecific intimacy. My university's herbarium is still well-funded, but as grants and students flow into the more glamorous fields of biology, it feels like the fundamental task of plant identification is being left behind. Fewer and fewer plant biology students know how to identify the plants in their own forests.
When taxonomy stagnates, the consequences are severe. Each year, botanists around the world discover about 2,000 new plant species, a number that has remained fairly constant since 1995, suggesting that there are tens of thousands of plants still to be introduced to science. Three-quarters of the new species are already at risk of extinction. Without taxonomists to classify these species, there is little hope of saving them or their habitats.
Governments and conservation groups are also more likely to take action when interesting species are discovered. For example, in the mid-1990s, after botanist John Clark and colleagues discovered several rare species in western Ecuador, the government established an ecological reserve the size of half the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In 1992, botanists discovered and named eight plants outside Birmingham, Alabama; the area is now protected by the Nature Conservancy.
Taxonomy can save lives and even influence what we eat. There are an estimated 8.7 million plant and animal species; we have classified only 1.2 million of them. Which yet-to-be-named species have undiscovered healing or other properties that could change the course of medicine and nutrition?
In the face of looming threats of climate change, nuclear war, and artificial intelligence, the simple act of listing plants may seem trivial. But when I asked Art Gilman, botanist, taxonomist, and author of The New Flora of Vermont, why it matters, he took a measured scientist's pause. He said nothing about curing cancer or reforming the food system. “We're missing out on an opportunity to know the world,” he said finally.
