Ronald Melville

Plant conservation and the red book

Abstract In the past, much effort has gone to the conservation of endangered animals and little attention has been paid to plants. There is now an urgent need to preserve samples of the ecosystems from which early Man selected the progenitors of modern crop plants. Away from the sites of the ancient civilizations, the potential of the flora to develop new crop plants, drugs, molluscicides, and other substances of technical value for mankind, is only beginning to be explored. Many plants have become extinct during the last century, and a large number are so depleted in individuals that they cannot long survive without protection. A ‘Red Data Book’ for endangered species of flowering plants is now being compiled to provide some of the information necessary for a rational approach to plant conservation.