In some ways plant “functional trait ecology” is just a new name for a style of research that goes back more than a century, focused on understanding the way that evolution and environment shapes plant form and function. That said, since the mid-1980s there has been huge progress in this research area, driven by a combination of advances in theory (e.g. optimality-based theory; and theory relating traits to ecological strategies), a surge in research effort (and prominence of this style of work), an explosion of data availability (driven by trait databases and sociological change), and cross-fertilisation between trait ecologists and physiologists, vegetation modellers, evolutionary biologists, and bioinformatics. In this overview talk I will give some background of where plant trait ecology came from, assess the current state of play, and highlight some potentially exciting future research directions.