Are you Plant Blind?
ARE YOU PLANT BLIND ?
1. Have you ever taken a picture of a tree?
2. What colour is a daffodil?
3. How many flowers can you name?
4. Have you ever climbed a tree?
5. Have you ever planted a seed?
6. When did you last have a picnic?
7. Can you name 5 different plants you can see in the park in Mohammedia?
8. Can you describe a potato plant?
9. Have you ever picked up flowers in a field?
10. What is this picture?
If you’ve answered ‘no’ to most questions and if you can’t name plants or know their colour, you are plant blind !
If you’ve answered ‘it’s the picture of a deer’, you are plant blind!
How come no one ever says this picture shows a classic temperate forest or a forest where birch and beech trees can be seen as well as grass and perhaps ferns, mosses and lichens with a grazing deer?
The fact is that we are ‘plant blind’ and are disconnected from nature. The average suburban young person has little relationship to the increasingly distant wilderness. By the time they are seven years old, most youngsters have been exposed to more than 20,000 advertisements. They can identify 200 corporate logos, but can they identify 10 trees? They can surf the web with ease, but few of them have climbed a tree, or planted a seed.
