Plant facts & figures
Simple up-to-date global facts about plants . . . the number of species, their biomass, and so forth, can be difficult to find. I have assembled this kind of information here (in one place) for those who might find it useful. Please keep me up-to-date with any errors or omissions.
A collection of information on plants in Australia prepared at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, is available here.
Biomass
Biomass as carbon content (factors out water) in gigatons of carbon (GtC).[1]
Plants comprise 80% of all the carbon stored in living organisms. Plants are mainly terrestrial, animals mainly marine, bacteria and archaea mostly deep subsurface. Terrestrial biomass is two orders of magnitude greater than marine. Human biomass is an order of magnitude greater higher than that of all wild mammals combined. Humans and their livestock outweigh wild mammals >20-fold. Domesticated fowl exceeds all other birds. In the last 10,000 years humans have halved wild plant biomass. The seas are mostly occupied by microbes, mainly bacteria and protists (≈70% total marine biomass, the remaining ≈30% mostly arthropods and fish). The deep subsurface holds ≈15% of the total biomass in the biosphere (mostly surface-attached bacteria and archaea). [1]1>
Collections
Herbaria
Botanic gardens
Conservation
Human activities are accelerating the rate of biodiversity loss such that two in five plant species is threatened with extinction.[2]
Food
Medicinal plants
Primary productivity
Human appropriation of net primary productivity (HANPP)

Human appropriation of net primary productivity
Development of NPP components and HANPP by land use type from 1910 to 2005 in gigatonnes of carbon per year (GtC/y).
Courtesy Krausmann 2013.

Regional breakdown of global HANPP (excluding human-induced fires) in the year 2000
Species number
The total number of species in the world is extremely difficult to determine. Current estimates range between 8 and 10 million.

Plants in the biosphere
Known and estimates of undescribed species on Earth, arranged in major taxonomic groups. Left: number of species (orange = estimated undescribed species, blue = described). Right: percentage of species already described (green) assumed unknown (yellow)
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons – Gregor Hagedorn – Accessed 22 October 2020
The World Flora Online (WFO) is a consortium of leading botanical institutions worldwide aiming to achieve an online Flora of all known plants in line with the 2011-2020 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation Target 1. No breakdown of numbers by taxonomic category is available yet.
The following are the numbers of accepted species listed in the former Plant List which follows the Kew taxonomic system of classification. It is still a work in progress.
Kew’s Plants of the World Online provides authoritative information of the world’s flora. It was launched in March 2017.
Largest
A clonal giant seagrass meadow of Posidonia australis in the shallow waters of Shark Bay, near Carnarvon, Western Australia is about 4,500 years old and measuring 180 kilometres across
Edgeloe, J.M. et al. 2022. Extensive Polyploid Clonality was a Successful Strategy for Seagrass to Expand into a Newly Submerged Environment Proceedings Royal Society B: 289(1976)
Trees
Number
Fastest growing
Fastest growing – bamboo 91 cm (35 in) per day or at a rate of 0.00003 km/h (0.00002 mph).[10]
Greatest volume
Volume Sequoiadendron giganteum, Giant Redwood (General Sherman), Sequoia National Park, California. 52,508 cu ft. Probably the world’s largest individual organism. [11]
Oldest
Oldest tree >4,700 years, Pinus longaeva Bristlecone Pine (Methuselah), White Mountain Range, California
(c. 4,900 Pinus longaeva Bristlecone Pine (Prometheus), Nevada cut down in 1964)[11]
Oldest clonal tree Picea abies, Norway Spruce (Pando), in Sweden 9,550 years. Populus tremuloides, Quaking Aspen (Pando), Utah, c. 80,000 years and >6000 tons. [11]
Tallest

Tallest Trees in the World
Image Courtesy Candide Gardening
Widest girth
11.6 m (38 ft) Widest girth in the world is the Arbol del Tule, a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) located in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Media Gallery
Page Menu
The Biggest Trees in the World ! How big it could be ?
MAD LAB – 2019 – 11:14
—
First published on the internet – 21 October 2020
The Community of Life
Showing biological divisions, geological ages and major evolutionary events
Courtesy Evogeneao https://www.evogeneao.com
