Materials and Methods

Species selection

We established a list of 716 UK plant species of conservation and ecological restoration interest according to the IUCN UK Red List (JNCC 2023), Section 41 of the 2006 Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Act (Natural England 2013) and the European restoration species pool proposed by Ladouceur et al. (2018). We prioritised species present in all three sources and removed species for which IUCN listed only one location (JNCC 2023). Species that were not considered to have native or archaeophyte status and those with unresolved taxonomy were also removed, as assessments that estimate genetic parameters can only be applied once the taxonomy is clear (Stace, 2010). The remaining species were then ranked for priority based on the availability of data (see methods below). The most highly ranked species were selected resulting in a list of 52 species (Table 1).