Marcus Stensmyr

in a drawer somewhere awaiting identification. “Many people think that discovering new species is just about going on expeditions to exotic locations and collecting new specimens, but the truth is that thousands of new plant species are lying neglected and unidentified in cupboards, drawers and cabinets around the world,” Oxford’s Robert Scotland said. The reason for this phenomenon, the researchers say, is that herbaria are often overburdened with samples and understaffed. If samples are sitting on shelves but nobody with the relevant expertise is at hand to identify them correctly, they may be misplaced or relegated to the bottom drawer, as Scotland found out during his own taxonomic research.