Botany can be traced back to the Stone Age when man started to put plants and herbs into edible and inedible categories. However, Theophrastus — a student of Aristotle — is credited as the father of botany.
Since his time, more than two millennia ago, botanists have collected thousands of plants to help us understand and preserve them. However, a new study from Australia concluded that most plants have never been photographed in their ecological context. According to them, 20 percent of native Australian plant species don’t have any field photos.
“It was surprising to see how many plant species had just line drawings, illustrations, paintings, or even no media at all,” said Thomas Mesaglio, the lead author and UNSW Ph.D. science student.
Why are photographs of plant species important?
Plant specimens collected and stored in various herbariums worldwide are invaluable. Today, all plants known to man have specimens collected in at least one herbarium. Also, for a plant name to be recognized, there has to be a sample preserved somewhere.
Having these specimens is great for science, but photographs can be excellent additional resources for education, research, and conservation. They offer extra information that cannot be obtained from preserved samples, such as flower color. In addition, photos may provide ecological context and more info about the plant’s original habitat.
Unfortunately, the study showed that many plants worldwide don’t have photographs in their native habitat. Only 53 percent of approximately 125,000 plants in the Americas have field photographs in major digital databases.
The study’s senior author, Will Cornwell, believes a lack of photographs is unsuitable for scientists. Plants that are difficult to identify may go extinct if scientists cannot place them in the wild.
“We had assumed every plant species would have simply been photographed by someone, somewhere, throughout history. But it turns out this isn’t the case,” said Cornwell. “This is where citizen scientists can come in and help us fill this gap with their photos.”
Factors affecting photographing plants
As mentioned, photographs show additional features such as flower color, bark appearance, and leaf orientation.
“Having a comprehensive photographic set helps us to be confident in our identification. In addition, when it is practically challenging to collect and preserve the entire plant, photos complement the physical voucher by showing the soil type, the habitat it’s growing in, and other species growing alongside it,” said Mesaglio.
However, the researchers found an interesting pattern during the research. Like animals, some plants get more attention than others. They said there might be more focus on ‘charismatic’ plants among botanists. For instance, shrubs or trees with prominent flowers, such as the Banksia plant, were the most well-photographed.
On the other hand, plants with “innocuous or pale-looking flowers” had fewer photographs. Grasses, herbs, and sedges also had lesser photographs because they may be “smaller and harder to spot.”
According to the study, remote areas also had fewer photographic records than more accessible areas. They recognized that while most plants in the southeastern states were well-documented, plants from Western Australia weren’t well-photographed.
The team also said that those places with fewer photographs have diverse plants. In addition, the terrain may not be easily accessible by road due to its ruggedness, which is probably why there’s more photographic deficit. However, Mesaglio says, “There’s an exciting opportunity to visit these locations because we might capture something that has never been photographed.”
What can citizen scientists do?
For this study, researchers used photographic resources from 33 major online databases. However, they believe some unphotographed plants may lie in private collections, slides, or hard drives. So, citizen scientists can help researchers complete the photographic profile of thousands of native plants.
“We also suspect more photos exist, but they’ve hidden away on social media or behind scientific paywalls that aren’t accessible, discoverable, or searchable,”
But how do you know which plants are unphotographed? There is a searchable list to help people know which plants are currently unphotographed in Australia. Both professionals and amateurs can work to provide photographs to public databases such as iNaturalist.
Plant photographs can help engage more people in plant science and guard native plants and herbs against threats like climate change and habitat clearing.
“Of the species with photographs, many have a single photo. We want to capture those unrepresented species and continue building the photographic record for all species. Doing so will help us identify, monitor, and conserve our native species for generations,” Mesaglio concludes.
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