At least one of every eight plant species in the world is under threat of extinction, according to the first comprehensive worldwide assessment of plant endangerment.

The assessment, which required more than 20 years of work by botanists and conservationists around the globe, added nearly 34,000 plant species to the World Conservation Union's growing Red List of imperiled organisms. In India there are 7.7 percent of total species (i.e. 1,236 no of species) are under the threat of extinction.

While endangered mammals and birds have commanded more public attention, it is plants, scientists say, that are more fundamental to nature's functioning. They under gird most of the rest of life, including human life, by converting sunlight into food. They provide the raw material for many medicines and the genetic stock from which agricultural strains of plants are developed. And they constitute the very warp and woof of the natural landscape, the framework within which everything else happens.

Nevertheless, of the world's 270,000 known species of plants, the 12.5 percent found to be at risk is a huge proportion, said David Brackett of Ottawa, chairman of the World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission. Moreover, he said, the figure is probably an underestimate, since data from most places in the world -- including some species-rich tropical nations where the countryside is being rapidly cleared -- are fragmentary.

Scientists generally cite two main reasons why plants become endangered: destruction of large swatches of wild countryside by agriculture, logging or development, and invasions of plants from one part of the world that run riot and crowd out native species in another part.

(Source: The New York Times, April 9, 1998)