Euronews.green reports that these are the findings of experts at Kew Gardens in the UK, who explained that many species of plants and fungi are discovered every year, but before scientists get the chance to name them and study them, they may be gone entirely.

It's needless to say that this is mostly due to climate change-related events, which proves to be yet again a grave source of biodiversity loss.

Professor Alexandre Antonelli, Director of Science at Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) Kew, said that "at a time when plants and fungi are increasingly under threat, we need to act fast to fill knowledge gaps and identify priorities for conservation."

Only 155.00 species of fungi have been formally named so far, but researchers have estimated in the past that their number could be anywhere from 250.000 to 19 million species.

Dr Tuula Niskanen from the University of Helsinki suggests that "naming and describing a species is the vital first step in documenting life on Earth."

Plants and fungi are essential to all life on Earth, since they provide other beings with healthy ecosystems to thrive in, but they also help us get the food we need, plus they can be used for medicine and even manufacturing clothing.

Some 350.000 species of vascular plants are known to science so far, but out of those, 100.000 of them haven't been given an official name and researchers believe that three in four are already threatened with extinction. Vascular plants are those who bear the required tissues to conduct water and nutrients they need to survive.

Additionally, 45% of the known flowering plants could be threatened with extinction, researchers say, including the family that includes the pineapple.

Dr Martin Cheek, Senior Research Leader in Accelerated Taxonomy at Kew, said that "my personal observation is that the number of threatened plants has increased shockingly in recent years."

"When I started out as a taxonomist 30 years ago, you wouldn’t even consider that a species you were publishing might go extinct; you just assumed it was going to still be around in the wild", he added.

Protecting all species of plants and fungi is important to preserve the biodiversity and the ecological balance in nature, as well as to allow ourselves to continue making medicine and other products that can't be made without plants.