ABSTRACT
Wild plant species disappear continuously from all countries. By far the largest losses in most countries are due to changes in land management, such as drainage of wetlands and destruction of woodland. In the Balearic Islands the widespread development of holiday resources invades or destroys many plant habitats: Limonium majoricum may have been completely exterminated by development - an endemic plant which grows nowhere else in the world. But even this is not all loss, and builders' rubble often provides a variety of microhabitats which make for rewarding plant-hunting. Some species can be reached by a botanist more easily than by a goat; the goats may be more nimble mountaineers, but even on hind legs they are not as tall as a man's outstretched arm, and they can not reach into cracks with fingers or use a walking-stick to hook a plant down.
