<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">This article was forwarded to me.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Patricia S. De Angelis, Ph.D.<br>
Botanist - Division of Scientific Authority<br>
Chair - Plant Conservation Alliance - Medicinal Plant Working Group<br>
US Fish & Wildlife Service<br>
4401 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 110<br>
Arlington, VA 22203<br>
703-358-1708 x1753<br>
FAX: 703-358-2276<br>
Working for the conservation and sustainable use of our green natural resources.<br>
<www.nps.gov/plants/medicinal><br>
</font>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>From:<i> Plant Science
Bulletin 47:1</i></b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Published quarterly by Botanical
Society of America, Inc., 1735 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210 </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">http://www.botany.org/bsa/psb/2001/psb47-1.html</font>
<br>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Times New Roman">From the Editor:</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Times New Roman">Many of us are employed at educational
institutions and, at least on occasion, are assigned to teach in the freshman
courses. This is a challenging assignment, and frequently a daunting one!
How can so many students, the future leaders of our communities and country,
have so little knowledge of and interest in plants? Why don't they realize
how important plants are in the ecosystem? Too many of them don't even
realize that plants are alive! It must be the fault of _____. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Times New Roman">Did you fill in the blank as you
were reading the previous sentence? I know I have - on more than one occasion.
The usual effect of this exercise is to re-set my challenge to make a difference
in the classroom. It is the beginning of another crusade to "convert
the ignorant masses" to the beauty, wonder, and importance of plants.
Occasionally there is that notable success, the student who is "turned
on" to plants and decides to pursue a career in the botanical sciences.
For the most part, though, my reward is from the knowledge that I tried
mightily, and my students really learned at least some of the concepts
we discussed. Maybe I set my expectations too high. (Maybe my students
are right - - my expectations are unreasonably high). But maybe there's
an underlying problem that I'm not seeing much better than my fellow teachers
at the pre-college levels. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Times New Roman">In this issue I've asked James
Wandersee to elaborate on some of the work he and his students have been
doing for the past several years. Jim is a botanist and science educator
whose interests and research specialization are in the field of cognition
- how students learn. Recently the lab has been concentrating on visual
learning and their results indicate that "there may be more than meets
the eye!" - editor </font>
<br>
<div align=center>
<br><font size=4 face="Times New Roman">Toward a Theory of Plant Blindness</font>
<br><font size=4 face="Times New Roman">James Wandersee and Elizabeth E.
Schussler</font></div>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Introduction to the Problem</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">We are two botanists and biology
educators who are committed to exploring and investigating why people in
the US tend to be less interested in plants than in animals, and why they
often fail to notice the plants that are present in their own environment
(Wandersee & Schussler, 1999a). We think such knowledge, once gained,
may be useful in a variety of settings—from teaching an introductory biology
course, to planning a public education program at a botanic garden, to
writing a children's book about plants, to pursuing new botanical research.
We also hope that the answers to these questions will ultimately lead to
improvement of the nation's scientific literacy level, and to greater public
understanding of plants (Flannery, 1999). The future of US research in
the plant sciences depends, to a large extent, on the support of a botanically
literate citizenry (Niklas, 1995). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Acknowledging Prior Work</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Across the years, others, of much
greater stature in the botany community than we, have pondered these same
questions. Much of what they have observed and concluded has been both
stimulating and helpful to us in beginning our own quest—and we have great
respect for the work that they have done (cf. Bernhardt, 1999; Kramer,
1999; Sundberg, 2000). For example, prior explanations for US students'
disinterest and inattention to plants have posited such underlying sources
as zoochauvinistic introductory biology instructors, zoocentric examples
used to teach basic biological concepts and principles, hypertechnical
and uninteresting botany lessons, and underemphasis (or utter neglect)
of plants in students' biological laboratory and field experiences (e.g.,
Darley 1990; Hershey, 1993, 1996; Nichols, 1919; Uno, 1994). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>The Quest for a New Theory</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">However, the findings of our own
research studies,including two recent nationwide studies on public perception
of plants (Wandersee & Schussler,2000a), coupled with the general findings
of other biology education and visual cognition researchers, suggest to
us that the aforementioned sources may well be secondary factors, but the
primary factor for explaining why people in the US often have a greater
interest in animals than plants, and why they tend to pay little attention
to the plants around them, is the way that humans perceive plants—due
to the inherent constraints of their visual information processing systems.
Theories are logical and principled systems that describe, predict, and
explain. What follows represents the current state of our progress toward
constructing a theory of plant blindness. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>The Pathway Leading to the Introduction
of a New Term</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Following several years of preliminary
discussions, library searches, small-scale investigations, and a fair amount
of trepidation, in 1998 we decided to introduce a new term, <i>plant blindness</i>,
to the US biology education literature (1998a). We did this because we
thought the current state of inattention to and under-representation of
plants—not just in biology instruction, but in US society in general—might
be better explained by using research-based principles of human perception
and visual cognition than by earlier, instructional-bias/deficiency-related-hypotheses—such
as zoocentrism, zoo-chauvinism, and plant neglect. We also wanted the new
term to be free of accumulated and inappropriate connotations, and to serve
as a precursor term for use in explaining some of the resultant learning-related
problems (cf. the secondary terms mentioned previously). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Delimiting the New Term</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">We coined the term <i>plant blindness
</i>by reasoning that most people were already linguistically familiar
with the use of the word <i>blind</i> as a metaphorical adjective suggesting
missing visual information (e.g., blind date, blind seam, blind chance,
blind alley, blind spot, snow blindness, need-blind admission). As for
the limits of the word <i>plant</i> within our new term, our work thus
far has been focused on the US public's inattention to and disinterest
in understanding most angiosperms. So the term is most appropriately used
in reference to the flowering plants. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Defining the New Term</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Subsequently, we defined <i>plant
blindness </i>as: the inability to see or notice the plants in one's own
environment—leading to: (a) the inability to recognize the importance
of plants in the biosphere, and in human affairs; (b) the inability to
appreciate the aesthetic and unique biological features of the life forms
belonging to the Plant Kingdom; and (c) the misguided, anthropocentric
ranking of plants as inferior to animals, leading to the erroneous conclusion
that they are unworthy of human consideration (Wandersee & Schussler,
1998a). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Possible "Symptoms"
of Plant Blindness</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">We have proposed that persons afflicted
with the condition known as <i>plant blindness</i> may exhibit symptoms
such as the following: (a) failing to see, take notice of, or focus attention
on the plants in one's daily life; (b) thinking that plants are merely
the backdrop for animal life; (c) misunderstanding what kinds of matter
and energy plants require to stay alive; (d) overlooking the importance
of plants to one's daily affairs (Balick & Cox, 1996); (e) failing
to distinguish between the differing time scales of plant and animal activity
(Attenborough, 1995); (f) lacking hands-on experiences in growing, observing,
and identifying plants in one's own geographic region; (g) failing to explain
the basic plant science underlying nearby plant communities—including
plant growth, nutrition, reproduction, and relevant ecological considerations;
(h) lacking awareness that plants are central to a key biogeochemical cycle—the
carbon cycle; and (i) being insensitive to the aesthetic qualities of plants
and their structures—especially with respect to their adaptations, coevolution,
colors, dispersal, diversity, growth habits, scents, sizes, sounds, spacing,
strength, symmetry, tactility, tastes, and textures (Wandersee & Schussler,
1999a). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Angiosperms, Flowers, and Visual
Signal Values</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Raven, Evert, and Eichhorn (1986)
have pointed out that "the angiosperms make up much of the <i>visible</i>
<i>world of modern plants</i>" (emphasis added; p. 584). Ghillean
Prance, past Director of Royal Botanic Gardens—Kew, has said that his
institution's research findings suggest that the earth is home to approximately
320,000 flowering plant species (Tangley, 1998). The key characteristic
that sets the angiosperms apart from other plants is the <i>flower </i>(Bernhardt,
1999). Unlike animals, flowering plants cannot move from place to place
to seek a mate; however, they have transcended their rooted condition via
a set of features embodied in their flowers. Pollination by insects is
basic in the angiosperms, and the first pollinating agents were probably
beetles. The more <i>attractive</i> the plants' flowers were to the beetles,
the more often they would be visited, and thus, the more seeds they would
produce. Any changes in the floral phenotype that made such visits more
frequent or more efficient offered an immediate selective advantage. Flower-visiting
animals are drawn there by <i>visual</i> and/or olfactory attraction. Thus,
plants were able to control their relationships with their pollinators,
in part, by modifying their <i>visual signal value</i> through coevolution.
To avoid or minimize herbivory, it is advantageous for the plants in a
population to blend together visually. So, it could be said that, in effect,
plants modify their <i>visual signal values</i> in accordance with the
survival values conferred. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Seeing Involves More Than Meets
the Eye</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Why do many people tend to overlook
the plants in their own environment? There is no simple scientific answer.
First of all, most of us think that we see all of our surroundings simply
by opening our eyelids and looking outward. Alas, there is much scientific
evidence to reject that view (Catell, 1895; Nickerson & Adams, 1979).
"No matter how hard we look, we see very little of what we look at,"
concludes Elkins (1996, p.11). Norretranders (1998, p. 126) has calculated
that during visual perception, the human eye generates in excess of 10
million bits of data per second as input for visual processing, yet our
brain ultimately extracts about 40 bits of data per second from that immense
data stream for our conscious vision to consider—of which about 16 bits
per second is ultimately fully processed. This means that our sensory bandwidth
"…is far lower than the bandwidth of our sensory perceptors."
Only .0000016 of the data our eyes produce are actually considered consciously;
it is assumed that the rest must somehow subliminally affect our thoughts,
feelings, and actions, and this means that most of our mental life must
take place subconsciously. It seems that visual consciousness is like a
spotlight, not a floodlight. And if that is not shocking enough, we do
not see events in real time (Norretranders, p. 210). The computation time
involved in processing the visual data we receive has been shown by experiment
to take approximately .5 second, making <i>the present</i> a self-delusion.
Perhaps the most important take-home message we have gleaned from Norretranders'
(p. 242) analysis is that, although large amounts of visual data are discarded,
"…what is presented [to our conscious attention] is precisely that
which is relevant." </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Factors That Affect People's
Visual Attention</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">"We [humans] …tend to be
surprisingly bad at recalling details of objects we see or use daily,"
writes acclaimed memory researcher Alan Baddeley (1982). For example, just
because we have looked at a lot of pennies during the course of our life
doesn't mean we can draw an accurate picture of one. Psychologist Stephen
Kosslyn of Harvard University cautions us in the very title of his article
that "the mind is not a camera, the brain is not a VCR." Rugg
(1998, p. 1151) emphasizes that "all events are not equal; they differ
in how they are initially encoded into memory." He claims that two
critical factors determine whether or not we will remember an event: the
degree of attention we pay to it, and the meaning or importance we assign
to it. We think that appropriate botanical education and plant-growing
experiences can enhance the quality of both. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Vision as Explained by Gibson's
Ecological Optics</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Ware (2000, p. 35) urges us to
think of the world as an "information display." Human visual
perception is about interpreting and understanding patterns of light—light
between 400-700 nanometers in wavelength—as absorbed, reflected, refracted,
diffracted, scattered, or transmitted within the environment we occupy.
Applying J. J. Gibson's (1986) framework for describing our visual environment—a
field he called ecological optics—it is the <i>surfaces</i> within our
environment that are the keys to understanding human visual perception.
Light + the environmental surfaces which present themselves yields the
<i>ambient optical array</i>—a term he coined to represent all the light
rays that are arriving from all directions at a particular point in the
environment, as structured in space and time. Gibson argues that <i>surface
texture</i> is one of the fundamental visual properties of an object and
it produces <i>texture gradients</i> that are very important, along with
<i>surface boundaries</i> and <i>cast shadows</i>, to our judging of space
and distance (Ware, 2000, p. 40). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>The Surfaces of Plants Affect
How We See Them</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Plant surfaces are amazingly varied
and complex: leaf microtextures, for example, can yield irregular patterns
of reflection—causing both the amount and color of light to vary with
ambient and source illumination angles, and with viewing angle. Illumination
level variations, such as when the sun temporarily goes behind a cloud
and then emerges, further complicates visual information processing. Digital
images of plants contain much less information than is present in the ambient
optical array, but they can be very useful when linked in a meaningful
way with actual laboratory and field experiences (Wandersee & Schussler,
1999b). We think it prudent to note that, when viewing works of art, experts
recommend limiting one's viewing of the images to no more than 1 hour per
session, and to no more than 150 images in a single session to avoid visual
processing fatigue (Berman, 2000). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Some Visual Principles That
May Help Explain Plant Blindness</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">We continue to search the research
literature to answer the question of why humans often overlook plants,
as opposed to animals, and why they are often less interested in learning
about and understanding plants than animals. In seeking a better explanation
for <i>plant blindness</i> than biased learning approaches and gaps, we
have compiled the following list of relevant principles of human visual
perception and visual cognition (Wandersee & Schussler, 1999a). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">1. People typically tend to know
less about plants than animals. Less than 2.5% of the US population is
directly involved in raising farm crops (Koning, 1994, p.7). Our research
has shown us that persons who have had few meaningful and mindful educational
and cultural experiences involving plants demonstrate little basis beyond
popular culture for plant recognition. Humans can only recognize (visually)
what they already know. Psychologists would say that plants have <i>low
signal value </i>for many US citizens today. Mack and Rock (1998) have
proposed what they call <i>inattentional blindness,</i> and they have found
that once objects have acquired meaning for an observer, they are more
likely to be consciously perceived. Inattention can become attention once
an object or event has meaning. We often see what we expect to see, not
what's actually there—because seeing involves not just the eye, but the
eye-brain system (Solso, 1994, p. 31). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">2. When flowering plants are not
flowering or possess inconspicuous flowers, the chromatic homogeneity,
the spatial homogeneity, and the overlap of their green leaves makes edge-detection
difficult. When the azaleas of the Deep South are not in bloom, they are
perceived as quite non-descript bushes. When they are covered with red,
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">pink, and white blossoms, no one
can ignore them. Gopnik, Meltzof, and Kuhl (1999, p. 65) claim that: "Paying
attention to edges is the best way of dividing a static picture into separate
objects." Because green plants are typically static objects in the
observer's field of view, seeing them and noticing them may pose much greater
problems of visual detection than dynamic objects do. In addition, humans
tend to get bored and habituate if they look at a relatively constant scene
for too long a time (p. 27). If the members of a set of objects are not
sufficiently distinct from their surroundings, they blend-in, and nothing
is consciously perceived. We cannot visually label them and they do not
"pop out" chromatically from their background. The visual cortex
continuously filters out more of the data it receives from the retina of
the eye than it retains for conscious analysis. Without our conscious intention,
attention, and effort to preserve it, most of the visual data our brain
receives about plants is likely to be discarded. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">3. The members of plant populations
typically grow in close proximity to each other, whether cultivated or
natural, and they rarely move (except in wind or rain). Static proximity
is a visual cue that humans use to group objects into bulk visual categories
(Zakia, 1997). Thus, individual plants may tend to be de-emphasized, with
the totality being labeled simply as "plants." If there are animals,
especially large ones, moving on this living environmental canvas, the
animals may become the focus of our attention. This helps to explain the
"plants as backdrop" phenomenon. When we watch a game of football,
for example, we rarely think about the huge population of grass plants
the players are moving upon. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">4. In most people's minds, plants
are typically rather non-threatening elements of an ecosystem and incidental
contact with them can usually be ignored without dire consequences. Visual
habit and general familiarity diminish the conscious attention we give
to such objects. If our vision operates to minimize expended energy, then
low-priority-level attributes may be discarded to make visual processing
easier. Human-eating plants do not exist, and we all know it. However,
if we are warned that poison ivy may be present in the woods where we are
walking, we are quick to develop and employ a template-like search image
for compound leaves containing three leaflets in order to screen incoming
visual data. In this case, the threat of bodily harm posed by its secondary
plant substance, pentadecanedienyl catachol, makes the possible presence
of this species in our path intensify our visual vigilance. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">5. The brain uses patterns of space,
time, and color to structure visual experience (Zakia, 1997). Because
they are immobile autotrophs, plants generally offer fewer spacing-based,
time-based, or color-based visual cues for humans to observe than animals
do—except, for example, during periods of pollination and dispersal (cf.
Wandersee & Schussler, 2000b). The brain is fundamentally a difference
detector, and when it finds none, the perceptual field is not perturbed.
For example, invasive plants, such as kudzu, capture our visual attention
and interest because they grow with great vigor in places where we don't
expect or want to see them. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">We have argued that, instead of
invoking zoological biases as the root cause, there may well be a visual-cognitive-societal
basis for why plants (and thus, the plant sciences) are frequently ignored
or undervalued by the US public, under-represented in American biology
courses, and considered less interesting than animals. Our research suggests
that a keen interest in animals does not necessarily preclude an equal
interest in plants, and vice versa. In fact, many botanists, including
us, are pet owners. In querying students about the reasons they were more
interested in learning about animals than plants, they responded that animals:
(a) can move quickly via appendages; (b) have to eat regularly just as
we do; (c) have human-like eyes for vision, (d) have human-like faces,
(e) exhibit many interesting behaviors, (f) have dramatic and easily observable
life cycles; (g) mate, give birth, and raise their offspring; and, (g)
can interact with, and sometimes even play with, people (Wandersee, 1986).
</font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Plants Versus Animals</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Our own research studies (Wandersee,
1986; Wandersee & Schussler, 1998b) and that of other biology educators
(Baird, Lazarowitz, & Allman, 1984) have found that, for the groups
of school students that were studied, the majority of students (both girls
and boys) preferred to study animals over plants. Our 1998 study of 274
US students drawn from grades 4-7 in a major metropolitan area indicated
that: (a) student interest in animals led plants by approximately a 2:1
margin; (b) girls were more likely than boys to express an interest in
learning about plants; and (c) of the nearly 300 students we queried, only
about 7% spontaneously expressed a scientific interest in plants—and of
<i>that</i> 7%, about two-thirds were <i>girls</i>. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>The Dominance of Interest in
Animals</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Paradoxically, plants form the
basis of most animal habitats and all life on earth (Abbott, 1998). Although
animals frequently steal the spotlight when the specter of extinction is
raised, one in eight plant species is currently threatened by extinction.
Intellectually, we may know that you can't sustain pandas without bamboo
for them to eat, but culturally, facts like this are often forgotten (Abbott,
1998). Few American children's cartoon characters, shaped candies, stuffed
toys, team mascots, songs, or games pay homage to plants rather than animals.
Children in the US seem to be primarily "animal-socialized."
</font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Perhaps it's not just an American
phenomenon, however. Visitors using the main entrance of the world's most
famous botanic garden, the Royal Botanic Gardens—Kew (located near London)
are greeted by <i>The Kew Mural</i>, a great and stunningly beautiful,
intricately carved, wall-mounted, wood-relief sculpture depicting the Kew
Gardens being assaulted by the powerful wind storm that struck down or
damaged over 1,000 trees on 16 October 1987. The many kinds of wood used
to make the sculpture came from actual timbers felled by the tempest; the
interplay of natural colors, polished wood grains, flowing shapes, and
visually palpable textures leave its viewer breathless. Yet, inexplicably,
about two-thirds of the sculpture's surface area is devoted to images of
<i>animals</i> being displaced by the storm. The plants depicted in it
are rendered as either fragile or marginalized; the animals are central
to the mural, and appear as either forceful opponents or agile survivors.
Plants are clearly the backdrop of the visual tale being told. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>The Importance of Having a Plant
Mentor</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">In our two national studies covering
27 states (the first, looking at US "Generation Y" youth, and
the second, at US mothers of young children) focusing on each demographic
group's attention to, interest in, and understanding of plants—one of
many interesting findings was that having early experiences in growing
plants under the guidance of a knowledgeable and friendly adult was a good
predictor of later attention to, interest in, and scientific understanding
of plants, as well as of the kinds of plant experiences a young mother
will provide for her children (Wandersee & Schussler, 2000a). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Describing Plant Mentorship</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">But the adult who serves as a <i>plant
mentor</i> need not necessarily be the child's mother. Lewis (1996, p.
xviii) writes: "I bonded with plants at an early age. As a small,
curious boy, I once watched my grandmother crush a dried zinnia flower
in her hand, then gently blow on the mixed pile of fragments. Petals and
other chaff flew off, leaving tiny brown daggers on her palm. `Seeds to
grow next year,' she said…I was awed and excited by the chance to practice
this magic, and, <i>with her guidance</i> [emphasis added], soon started
my own tiny garden." Your authors remember similar "magic moments"
as budding plant scientists—one of us recalls an exciting, mentored, personal
experiment during her 6th grade year, comparing the germination rates of
pea seeds that she placed in a freezer for various intervals to pea seeds
that were not frozen; the other recalls using a small vial of gibberellic
acid, obtained from a local greenhouse by his father, in a supervised,
personal attempt to grow giant bean plants (ala' Jack and the Beanstalk)
for a school science project during his 5th grade year. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>A Possible Long-Term Solution
to the Plant Blindness Problem</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Based on the evidence we have gathered
to date, we hypothesize that early and iterative, well-planned, meaningful
and mindful education (both scientific and social) about plants —coupled
with a variety of personal, guided, direct experiences with growing plants—may
be the best way to overcome what we currently see as the human "default
condition"—<i>plant blindness</i>. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Plants, Culture, and Plant Blindness</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">We also postulate that the greater
the degree of value a culture ascribes to plants, and the greater number
of members within it who work directly with plants or plant products, the
more likely the prevalence of plant blindness in that culture will be lower
(cf. Balick & Cox, 1996). As Charles Lewis (1996, p. 22) contends,
"Those who live by hunting or gathering, fishing or farming, must
observe nature's signs….Changes in foliage color would be a strong indication
that preparation for surviving the long winter should begin." </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">In addition, Lewis (1996, p. 20)
asks: "If dwellers in the savanna [of Africa] did use tree shapes
and the visual appearance of the terrain for swift assessment of its potential
as a habitat, could they not have evolved innate preferences for particular
landscape characteristics (preferences that resonate within us today)?
Investigators have found that Americans like park settings that might be
characterized as `savannas'…." Research by Balling ( a psychologist)
and Falk (an ecologist) found that younger school children (ages 8-11)
who were shown slides of five different biomes expressed a significant
preference for savanna-like settings, and later found that only after people
grow older do they begin to select more varied landscapes—usually of the
type familiar to them (1982). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>A Botanical "Sense of Place"</b>
</font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Hollingsworth (2001) writes about
the value of capturing one's <i>sense of place</i> photographically—via
a close-up, a detail, a panorama, or a landscape scene that approximates
a still- life painting of an importance site in one's personal history.
At the beginning of a graduate seminar in botanical education, we also
explored this idea, by asking the participating science instructors to
prepare and then give brief, 5- to 10-minute talks describing their own
<i>botanical sense of place</i>—reflecting upon salient memories drawn
from childhood days, and specifying several kinds of plants which grew
in their yard or neighborhood that played a role in their life while they
were growing up—and situating their hometown in its ecological and economic
botany settings. It seemed to be a worthwhile exercise in self-discovery
for them—realizing who their plant mentor was (if they had one); which
plants they often used for play, for shelter, for scent, or for taste;
what kind of bioregion they lived in; what kinds of area cash crops became
familiar to them; and so forth. More importantly, it brought prior knowledge
about and experiences with plants to the fore, and it provided accessible,
conceptual anchor points for linking the new botanical knowledge they were
learning to their existing knowledge structure about plants (Fisher, Wandersee,
& Moody, 2000; Mintzes, Wandersee, & Novak, 1998, 2000). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Some Activist Approaches We
Are Trying</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">"Prevent Plant Blindness."
Those three simple words are emblazoned diagonally across our 20"
x 30", bulletin-board-sized, full-color, classroom poster which is
being distributed to more than 22,000 US science teachers and botany instructors
as part of our national campaign to increase students' awareness of and
interest in plants. We designed the poster to be initially puzzling, and
to elicit inferences about its meaning. This aligns with Solso's (1994,
p. 26) tenet drawn from visual cognition research which says "…we
gaze longer at interesting or puzzling things…." The poster shows
a tree-lined, riverine landscape. Hovering, Magritte-like, in the sky above
is a large pair of dark-red-tinted glasses. The implication is that someone
wearing those red glasses would not be able to see any of the green plants
shown in the scene below—that if one's vision is "filtered,"
either physically or conceptually, one may actually miss seeing the plants
that are present in one's environment. The back of the poster provides
a complete definition of plant blindness, lists its symptoms, and offers
directions for 20 simple, plant-science-related activities. This poster
was subsequently endorsed by BSA's Education Committee. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Besides the plant poster project,
we have also written, illustrated, and published a 40-page children's science
picture book which presents a plant mystery to children between the ages
of 4 and 8 (Schussler & Wandersee, 1999). It is intended to be the
first of a series of mystery books involving the two main children's characters,
who are portrayed as being best friends, namely—Abby and Tate. The first
book subtly introduces its "readers" to some basic principles
of plant care and encourages them to try raising an African Violet plant.
We have introduced the book to a fair number of elementary teachers, parents,
and grandparents, and have made it available at cost on Amazon.com. It
has just been translated into Spanish by plant ecologist Sandra M. Guzman,
and a Spanish version will be available in about six months. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">In addition, in 1998, we founded
a science book award, now recognized by children's literature libraries
and authors worldwide, called the Giverny Award. It is given each year
to the author and illustrator of the book selected by the Award Committee
as the best children's science picture book in our selection pool—with
preference given to storybooks that teach plant science concepts and principles
in an indirect and engaging way. Each year's winning book is described
on our research group's web site (</font><font size=3 color=blue face="Times New Roman"><u>http://www.15degreelab.com</u></font><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">
) We hope that our annual book award, children's plant mystery books, classroom
poster design and distribution, research publications, and regular presentations
at selected, science teachers' and scientific society meetings will, at
least in a small way, help increase the US public's awareness and interest
in plants. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Brief Closing Remarks</b> </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">If we are to liberate American
students from the intellectual, perceptual, and visual processing traps
that can lead to <i>plant blindness, </i>those of us who teach introductory
biology and botany courses must work to expand our students' botanical
horizons. While biological science departments may be currently reorganizing
themselves along the lines of common research themes rather than taxa of
organisms studied, plants stand as distinctively different life forms from
humans, life forms that have, historically, rewarded our focused study,
observation, and investigation. We think there are sound scientific reasons
why botany, like the plants it studies, needs to maintain its own visibility
and identity (Greenfield, [1955] 1999). </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">In BSA's strategic plan, <i>Botany
for the Next Millennium</i> (Niklas 1995, p. 11) we read that, "Functionally,
plants are the primary mediators between the physical and biological world."
That is no minor feat; that role alone calls out to those who teach biology
and botany to help "Prevent Plant Blindness." </font>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Times New Roman">Authors' Note: We have recently
discovered that the adjective <i>plant blind</i> was used in the past within
the British horticultural literature, in reference to plants that had lost
their apical shoot tips—either by nature or by human intervention. However,
its use is apparently quite uncommon in horticultural publications today,
and, to the best of our knowledge, the term <i>plant blindness </i>has
rarely been used in that literature. </font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">James H. Wandersee, Louisiana State
University </font>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Elisabeth E. Schussler, Southeastern
Natural Sciences Academy </font>
<br>