Many people barely notice plants consciously. On a theater stage, they would in a sense be the backdrop, while animals would stand in the foreground as the actual actors. Plants often appear only as a “green mass”, not as living beings in their own right, with individual species, complex adaptations and their own evolutionary history. This phenomenon is known as plant blindness—a term coined in the late 1990s by botanists James H. Wandersee and Elisabeth E. Schussler.
However, botanist Sandra Knapp points out that plants are by no means merely the “scenery” of life. On the contrary: plants make up the largest share of biomass on Earth. Estimates suggest that plants account for around 450 gigatons of biomass, while all animals together make up only about two gigatons. Plants therefore not only shape landscapes and habitats; they form their ecological foundation.
Wandersee and Schussler describe plant blindness as the inability to consciously perceive plants in one’s own environment or to recognize their importance for the biosphere and human life. This also includes judging plants as less interesting or less important than animals. In studies, they found that people remembered animal names much better than plant names—even when the participants were botany students.
In recent research, the term Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD) has increasingly been used as well. It describes essentially the same phenomenon as Plant Blindness—namely the tendency to perceive plants less consciously and to underestimate their importance compared to animals. The main reason for the newer term is criticism of the potentially ableist connotations of the word “blindness.”
One possible consequence of this plant blindness becomes apparent in the issue of species extinction. Most people initially associate it with the disappearance of animal species, while threatened plants receive far less attention. Why is that?
One possible explanation may lie in human perception itself. Vision is especially specialized in detecting movement, contrasts and rapid changes—traits that often occur in animals. Plants, by contrast, often seem static and change slowly. Animals have faces, eyes and voices, and they display behaviors that more readily trigger emotions in people, so plants without conspicuous flowers are often perceived by the human brain merely as a uniform background.
There are also cultural factors. Animals are at the center of media, documentaries and species conservation campaigns far more often than plants. Pandas, whales and polar bears are considered flagship species of conservation, while threatened plant species are hardly known. This may also be reinforced by increasing urbanization and the associated alienation from nature. Many people today grow up with far less direct contact with natural habitats than earlier generations.
For precisely this reason, plant extinction often goes unnoticed for a long time. If a meadow flower becomes rarer over the years, hardly anyone notices. By contrast, many people notice that fewer insects stick to windshields, fewer frogs croak or fewer birds sing. They may still notice that where there was once meadow or forest there is now concrete, but which individual plant species have disappeared remains invisible. While almost everyone can name at least one extinct animal species, only a few people would probably be able to spontaneously name an extinct plant species.
This plant species, originally found only on the gravel shores of Lake Constance, has been missing since the 1960s and is now very likely extinct.
Image: Doreen Fräßdorf, State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart
People do have an awareness of plants—but often only when they are directly useful or deliberately catch the eye. Crop plants such as wheat, maize, potatoes and fruit trees are considered important for food security and the economy. Crop failures, drought damage or the disappearance of certain cultivated plants are therefore quickly perceived as problems. Ornamental and house plants also play an important role for many people: the market for rare or decorative plants is enormous, and quite a few people become emotional when an expensive monstera or orchid dies.
The ecological importance of many plant species is often underestimated. Wild plants in bogs, forests and meadows remain virtually invisible to many people, even though they perform important ecological functions and form the basis of stable ecosystems. Plants produce oxygen, store carbon, stabilize soils and provide the food base for countless animal species.
Many ecosystems function stably only because they consist of a great diversity of specialized plants. If this diversity is lost, animals, fungi and other organisms that depend directly on specific plants disappear as well. The real problem of plant blindness is therefore not only that plants are often overlooked. Many species receive little attention even when they are threatened, disappear from habitats or have already gone extinct.
No isolated cases: Disappeared and threatened plants
When people think of extinct species, images of dodos, mammoths or thylacines usually come to mind. The fact that plants also disappear is often overlooked, even though they too are the result of unique evolution or extraordinary adaptations. Their stories of loss can also be dramatic:
This plant was discovered in the U.S. state of Georgia in 1765, but no wild specimen has been recorded since 1803. Clearing, fires, flooding and introduced diseases probably led to its disappearance. Today, the Franklin tree exists only in botanical gardens and private collections; all known trees trace back to a few seeds and seedlings collected in the 18th century. The species is therefore considered extinct in the wild (IUCN).
Image: Wendy Cutler from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1945, botanist Geoff Baylis discovered the only known specimen of kaikōmako on New Zealand’s Three Kings Islands. For decades, the survival of the entire species depended on this single tree, which persisted only because it grew on a scree slope inaccessible to introduced goats. The species was saved only through cuttings and later propagation. Nevertheless, the IUCN now classifies kaikōmako as critically endangered.
Image: Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
To this day, not a single female specimen of the South African cycad Encephalartos woodii is known. All plants existing worldwide trace back to the same male wild plant, discovered in the oNgoye Forest at the end of the 19th century. Although the species has been preserved in botanical gardens through offshoots, natural reproduction is impossible. E. woodii is therefore still considered extinct in the wild (IUCN).
Image: Depositphotos (collaboration)
In 2025, the IUCN declared three plant species officially extinct—one of them was Brunoniella neocaledonica. The plant was known only from the main island of Grande Terre in New Caledonia and was collected only twice—in 1967 and 1968. Since then, it has remained missing despite searches. The few known sites were in low scrubland on mineral-rich soils, a habitat affected by bushfires and introduced rusa deer.
Image: Brunoniella neocaledonica (Heine) Moylan Collected in New Caledonia, CC BY 4.0, via GBIF
This evergreen tree or shrub from the Seychelles was long thought extinct before a few surviving specimens were rediscovered in the 1970s. The evolutionarily unique species is the only representative of its entire plant family and today grows at only a few hard-to-reach sites. It is threatened above all by invasive plants, frequent wildfires and its extremely small population, which makes natural reproduction difficult.
Image: Dao Nguyen and James Hardcastle, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In Australia, researchers discovered the Wollemi pine in 1994 in a gorge in Wollemi National Park—a tree species from an ancient lineage of the araucaria family. Its closest relatives had previously been known only from fossils millions of years old; the species group had therefore long been considered extinct. Worldwide, fewer than 60 mature wild trees are known today. During the Australian bushfires of 2019/2020, it was saved from destruction only through targeted firefighting.
Image: Akerbeltz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
After the discovery of St Helena from 1502 onward, numerous endemic animal and plant species disappeared from the island, including St Helena ebony. The tree species once grew in dry valleys and on slopes of the island. It was probably eradicated by introduced goats that ate large parts of the vegetation, as well as by heavy timber use. The last confirmed specimen was documented in 1771; later reports remained unconfirmed.
Image: John Charles Meliss, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The stories of these plant species may seem like exceptional isolated cases, but they are by no means rare.
Seagrass meadows: Invisible plant forests under water
Extensive plant landscapes grow beneath the surface of many coastal waters, and they are enormously important for climate and biodiversity: seagrass meadows. Many people are barely aware that such underwater ecosystems exist at all. This, too, shows how far plant blindness can reach.
Seagrasses are not algae, but true flowering plants that evolved from land plants millions of years ago and later adapted to life in the sea. Today they form extensive underwater meadows in shallow coastal regions all over the world. In the Mediterranean, for example, Neptune grass (Posidonia oceanica) dominates, and its dense stands are often called the “lungs of the Mediterranean”.
Ecologically, seagrass meadows are among the most important habitats on Earth. They produce large amounts of oxygen, store carbon and stabilize coasts. At the same time, they serve as nurseries and habitats for countless fish, crustacean and mollusk species. In the Mediterranean, estimates suggest that around one third of all life depends directly or indirectly on Neptune grass.
Nevertheless, seagrass meadows are disappearing worldwide; in the Mediterranean, researchers are observing significant declines in many places. Causes include the climate crisis, rising sea temperatures, increasing drought, pollution, coastal development and damage from ship anchors.
A particular problem is that many seagrass species grow extremely slowly. Scientists report that seagrass in the Mediterranean apparently reaches its stress limit at temperatures of around 30 to 31°C. Entire seagrass meadows can die off within a few days as a result—their recovery often takes decades.
Seagrass meadows show how strongly plant ecosystems influence climate, biodiversity and human livelihoods, even though they often play only a minor role in public awareness.
Image: Karim saari, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Plant blindness in the tree of life
How far the consequences of plant blindness can reach is also shown by a recent study in the journal Science. Researchers examined the evolutionary diversity of all known flowering plants for the first time and concluded that more than one fifth of their evolutionary history is threatened with extinction. Species with no close relatives are particularly affected, because they represent a unique part of the evolutionary “tree of life”.
Precisely such plants are rarely at the center of public interest. While threatened mammals or birds often serve as flagship species of conservation, evolutionarily unique plants remain largely unknown—even though their extinction could cause entire branches of evolutionary history to disappear forever.
Image: Amborella_trichopoda_(3173820625).jpg: Scott Zona from USAderivative work: Bff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The idea of a “tree of life”, in which all organisms are evolutionarily connected, goes back largely to Charles Darwin. In the evolutionary tree, not all species are equally unique: some have many close relatives and share large parts of their evolutionary history with other species. Others, by contrast, stand on evolutionarily isolated branches and have few or no close relatives left.
When such an isolated species dies out, a lineage that developed independently over many millions of years often disappears. These evolutionarily unique plants include, for example, the jellyfish tree (Medusagyne oppositifolia) from the Seychelles and the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), the last known representative of a lineage more than 300 million years old.
To estimate how much unique evolutionary history among flowering plants is threatened, the research team led by Félix Forest used the so-called EDGE index (“Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered”). It combines a species’ extinction risk with its evolutionary distinctiveness—in other words, how isolated it is in the tree of life.
For the study, the researchers analyzed more than 335,000 flowering plant species using genetic data and the IUCN Red List. The results showed that around 21% of the evolutionary history of all flowering plants is considered threatened—almost twice as much as for vertebrates such as mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish combined. At the same time, the team identified almost 10,000 EDGE species: highly threatened plants that are also especially evolutionarily unique.
These threatened species include spectacular plants such as the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), but also economically important crops such as vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), whose fermented seed pods are used to make real vanilla. According to the IUCN, both species are endangered.
The study did not examine the causes of plant extinction, but rather the question of how much evolutionary uniqueness could be lost. The aim is to focus species conservation measures more strongly in the future on those species whose extinction would leave especially large gaps in the evolutionary tree.
Image: Tim Rademacher, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Plant blindness in climate change: When habitats disappear
Plant blindness also shows itself in the issue of climate change. While images of polar bears on melting ice floes, threatened emperor penguins or marine mammals receive worldwide attention, the effects of global warming on plants often remain in the background. Yet according to a second study in the journal Science, climate change could push tens of thousands of plant species to the brink of extinction by the end of the century.
The researchers conclude that between 7 and 16% of all plant species worldwide could lose at least 90% of their habitat. Even under moderate emissions scenarios, that would correspond to around 35,000 to 50,000 plant species within the next 55 to 75 years. The analysis was based on biological and climatic computer models for around 18% of all known plant species.
For a long time, scientists assumed that many plant species could gradually shift into cooler regions as the climate changed, for example to higher elevations or farther toward the poles. Such shifts have indeed already been observed, which is why some conservation projects have even tried to deliberately relocate plants. However, the new study shows that this will not save many species. The real problem is that suitable habitats are disappearing.
Image: Doreen Fräßdorf
Many plant species are adapted to very specific environmental conditions. They require a particular combination of temperature, precipitation, soil properties and seasons. Study author Xiaoli Dong illustrated this in an interview with the Washington Post using the example of a tulip: while suitable temperatures shift farther north because of climate change, precipitation patterns change in other regions—but the right soil stays in place. The conditions the tulip needs to survive therefore occur less and less often at the same time in the same place. Suitable habitats become smaller, more fragmented or disappear entirely.
According to the study, the problematic point is that 70 to 80% of the projected plant losses are directly due to the disappearance of suitable habitats—not to plants spreading too slowly. Even species that could theoretically migrate often simply no longer find suitable environmental conditions in many places.
The consequences could alter entire plant communities worldwide. In some regions, new species could immigrate and temporarily even increase local species numbers. At the same time, many ecosystems would change fundamentally. The Arctic, the Mediterranean region and Australia could be particularly strongly affected. In the Arctic, the climate is warming about four times faster than the global average, causing many plants to lose their habitats rapidly. In Australia, by contrast, altered precipitation patterns and increasing dryness play an especially important role.
The researchers therefore emphasize that classic protection measures alone may no longer be sufficient in the future. Climate refugia could become more important—areas where suitable conditions persist for longer despite climate change. Botanical gardens and seed banks are also likely to play an increasingly important role in preserving threatened plant species at least outside their original habitats.
This study illustrates how problematic plant blindness can be. While the consequences of climate change for animals are discussed intensively, its impacts on the plant world often fade into the background.
Image: Phyllis Tebbs Carrasco, CC BY-NC 4.0, via iNaturalist
Silent plant extinction—even on our doorstep
A look at the Red Lists of Germany’s plants (2018) also shows that species extinction has long affected not only animals or exotic plants of tropical rainforests. In the nationwide Red List of ferns and flowering plants, 3,651 established species were assessed, including herbs, grasses, perennials, shrubs and trees. More than 1,000 of them are considered threatened. Only just under 43% of the assessed species are currently classified as not threatened. The Red List of mosses shows a similar picture: around one quarter of the taxa are considered threatened in their populations, and only about 41% are classified as not threatened.
In addition, the Red Lists already document concrete losses. Among ferns and flowering plants, 65 taxa in Germany are considered extinct or missing; among mosses, the number is 39. Although these species still occur outside Germany, the lists show that entire populations and regional components of plant diversity have already disappeared.
Image: Fissidens grandifrons Brid. Observed in United States of America by Graham Steinruck, CC BY-NC 4.0, via GBIF
Plant extinction is often gradual. A species frequently disappears regionally first, long before its decline receives wider attention. Unlike many animal species, there are usually no images, headlines or public debates. Yet disappearing plants change entire ecosystems: with them, food plants, habitats and complex ecological interactions are lost, on which numerous other organisms depend.
The Red Lists of the German federal states also show why many plant species are declining. Usually, this is not a matter of single dramatic events, but of long-term changes to entire habitats. In the Bavarian Red List of ferns and flowering plants (2024), for example, intensive agriculture, nutrient inputs, habitat destruction, periods of drought and climate change are named as central causes of threat.
Wet meadows, bogs, river floodplains and nutrient-poor open landscapes are particularly affected. The Red List of higher plants of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (2005), for example, describes the sharp decline of many wet-meadow plants due to drainage, abandonment and eutrophication. The example of the globeflower (Trollius europaeus) shows how formerly widespread species have become rare because suitable habitats have been lost.
Mosses also respond sensitively to environmental changes. Saxony’s Red List of mosses (2023) points out that bog mosses in particular are coming under increasing pressure from climate change and dry periods. This is also problematic because mosses perform important ecological functions. Peat mosses of the genus Sphagnum, for example, form raised bogs that store large amounts of carbon and therefore play an important role for the climate.
Another interesting note comes from the Red List of mosses of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (2009): it explicitly mentions that mosses are often not at the center of popular nature conservation because of their “inconspicuousness”, even though they are of great importance for ecosystems and landscape functioning. Many plants and plant-like organisms therefore disappear quietly—not because they are unimportant, but because their loss is often barely noticed.
Some plant species can indeed be brought back regionally through reintroduction projects, but this works only if suitable habitats still exist or are restored. Plants often disappear not because of individual threats alone, but because bogs have been drained, river floodplains built over, meadows fertilized or landscapes fragmented. Plant extinction is therefore above all one thing: habitat extinction.
Image: Oleg Kosterin, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
People overlook almost everything—except vertebrates
Plant blindness may be part of an even larger problem. Some researchers, including botanist Sandra Knapp, argue that people generally pay attention mainly to vertebrates, while plants, fungi and the enormous diversity of invertebrates are overlooked much more often.
In fact, major knowledge gaps still exist for many groups of organisms. Even among flowering plants, only a portion has so far been scientifically recorded and assessed for extinction risk. Although around 335,000 flowering plant species are known worldwide, only about 20% have so far been officially assessed by the IUCN. In total, around 400,000 plant species are known worldwide, but the Red List currently includes fewer than 77,000 assessed species.
This imbalance is even more apparent for fungi and invertebrates. Of the estimated roughly two million fungal species worldwide, only about 0.04% have been assessed by the IUCN so far. At the same time, more than 400 of the nearly 1,300 recorded fungal species are already considered threatened. For invertebrates, too, official threat assessments exist for only a small fraction, even though arthropods such as insects, spiders and crustaceans make up at least 95% of all known animal species. A study from Australia shows how serious the knowledge gaps are: there, more than 9,000 invertebrate species may already have gone extinct since 1788—largely unnoticed by the public and by research.
Similar to so-called plant blindness, researchers now also speak of invertebrate blindness and fungus blindness. These terms refer to the low level of social, media and in some cases scientific attention given to invertebrates and fungi. Many of these organisms are small, inconspicuous, difficult to identify and usually trigger far fewer emotions than vertebrates.
The fates of highly threatened species such as the Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) or the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) are known worldwide, but only a few people know anything about threatened beetle, snail, moss or fungal species.
Why inconspicuous species matter too
Biodiversity encompasses far more than mammals or birds. Plants, fungi, invertebrates and vertebrates together form the foundation of functioning ecosystems. Plants create habitats and form the basis of almost all food chains, fungi enable nutrient cycles, and insects pollinate plants or serve as food for countless other species. If one part of this network disappears, many other species and habitats often come under pressure as well.
Plants in particular are far more than a mere “homogeneous, green mass” of nature. Without photosynthesis, there would be no oxygen to breathe and no complex terrestrial ecosystems. Over millions of years, plants have changed Earth’s atmosphere, built soils, created habitats and influenced the climate. Forests, bogs, seagrass meadows and algae still shape global biogeochemical cycles today and store enormous amounts of carbon.
Perhaps this is precisely the problem with plant blindness, invertebrate blindness or fungus blindness: people often pay attention mainly to those living beings that seem similar to them, trigger emotions or respond to them directly. But the ecological importance of a species does not depend on whether it is large, beautiful, fluffy or charismatic.
When plants disappear, it ultimately affects humans as well—from food security and clean water to climate stability and functioning ecosystems. Protecting biological diversity therefore requires not only urgent action, but also a willingness to pay attention to all forms of life.
Sources
- Borenstein, S. (2026, May 7). Scientists say don’t forget about plants. Climate change is endangering tens of thousands of species. The Washington Post.
- Forest, F., Brown, R., Buerki, S., et al. (2026). High risk of extinction across the flowering plant tree of life. Science, 392, 655–659. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adz0773
- Knapp, S. (2019). Are humans really blind to plants? Plants, People, Planet, 1, 164–168. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.36
- Ampatzidis, G., & Amprazis, A. (2026). Plant Awareness Disparity (Lack of Plant Awareness). Encyclopedia, 6(3), 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia6030063
- Wandersee, J. H., & Schussler, E. E. (1999). Preventing Plant Blindness. The American Biology Teacher, 61(2), 82–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/4450624
- Wang, J., Oliveira, B. F., Moore, F. C., et al. (2026). Climate-induced range shifts support local plant diversity but don’t reduce extinction risk. Science, 392, 648–654. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1676
- Weingärtner, A. (2026, April 25). Kollabiert die Lunge des Mittelmeers? taz.
About the author: Doreen Fräßdorf
Doreen Fräßdorf is the author and publisher of artensterben.de. She researches and writes about extinct and endangered species in the modern era, with a focus on red lists, scientific studies, historical sources, and current conservation efforts. The goal is a clear, evidence-based overview of biodiversity loss and species protection.
She is also the author of a non-fiction book about extinct modern-era mammals.
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