New research from Kew and the Zoological Society of London has found that a fifth of flowering plant evolutionary history could vanish without adequate protection.⁣ ⁣ Some of the endangered species are the last of ancient lineages. The shrub Amborella trichopoda, for example, represents an evolutionary branch that split off from all other flowering plants about 130 million years ago. Losing them could mean losing access to millions of years of evolutionary history.⁣ ⁣ #kewgardens #flowers #zsl #research #science #evolution