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Plant Blindness
#1
This is a direction we don't usually go, but plants are part of the environment and they make up the habitat that animals live in. If we care about animals we have to care about plants too.
I know it is a long article, but it is worth reading.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190425...t-disorder

Having read this I think I understand how some people seem to be environmentally blind. If you don't recognize plants you don't recognize the whole of the environment. People like that can care about polar bears that have lost their ice flows, but they don't understand climate change and the environment as a whole. To understand and care about climate change you have to accept all life and value it. It is all part of a big picture that would be incomplete without plants or any other forms of life.

So we don't just need to encourage people to care about animals, we have to encourage them to care about the trees and all other forms of vegetation. Respecting the Earth means respecting all parts of the Earth.
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Catherine

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#2
I agree. I think we should have an awareness of plant life. Plant life is essential for everything! For us as well as other creatures.
It's an interesting article. I was wondering if humans are more likely to notice animals than plant life, because animals have faces. And our brains are trained to focus on faces.

I remember when I was a very little child (earliest memories) and I was fascinated by plant life. I was particularly drawn to some flowers like Pansies because they seemed to have faces! And Snap Dragons because when you gently squeeze them, they open their "mouths" (I used to put tiny pieces of food inside these poor flowers!)

My mother had planted a tiny garden in that dingy little town where I was born, and it was a great source of joy and magic for me in very early childhood. We moved when I was 7 to a more rural situation, with woods and fields, and that was even happier.

I recall as a child noticing so much in the woods, the smells, textures, appearance, and all details of the plants and trees that grew there. I wouldn't have known what to do without that place!

Other important things are the actual hands-on connections with those living things and attention to them....being outside a large percentage of the time (we would be outside in the woods in all weathers and at all opportunities)....not talking....not staring at a mobile phone....not being driven to school  (though I admit in some areas nowadays it isn't always safe for a child to walk long distances to school, as it was in my day.)
Many children and adults today do not spend meaningful long periods out in natural environments on the whole.
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#3
You might be right about the faces. We are drawn to faces and can connect with them. Plants don't have faces so we are not drawn to them.  I liked snap dragons and pansies for the same reasons as you, but I never thought of feeding the snap dragons.

I grew up in the country and we planted a large garden and the property was surrounded by trees that my father planted. I grew up knowing that food came from the things I planted. I understood that the trees were planted to protect us from the weather. I think I had an instinctive understanding of plants and animals and their interconnection. I could tell plants apart because I knew which ones we could eat and which ones were dangerous. We went into the bush every summer and picked wild berries. Nature was essential to my life.

I meet people now who have no knowledge of how the world works. They have very little tolerance for the animals in their world. They don't even see the trees. There are people who hate trees because they have leaves that fall on the ground. If they do grow plants they grow things they can control. These people are definitely plant blind. They don't connect with living things.

I think the article might be on to something. I watch people step on young perennials just coming up and if I mention it they look around and still can't see what I am talking about.

It does explain some of our trouble getting people to take the environment seriously. They need to see the life around them and respect it. Until they do at best they will care about one fuzzy panda at a time and they will never care about the bamboo that they pandas eat. If you don't have the bamboo you don't have the pandas.

I wonder how we can help a person to see all the life around them and to understand their place in it.
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Catherine

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#4
Wilderness "adventure" weekends for children and adults would be a nice idea -run by responsible qualified people.

When I was at school (junior school) we also had "nature walks". That was a "lesson" I loved very much. We rarely went far and usually only for an hour but it was so interesting.
The English teacher did that...but in junior school, the lady who taught us English also did other things such as the Nativity play, sing-alongs, and some history.
She would often bring in a flower or a part of a plant, to show us and talk about after assembly in the morning.

Little things like that can help. I never forgot what she talked about and showed us. It was limited, but it was interesting.
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#5
You are right. Wilderness weekends and nature walks would help people connect with nature. 
Maybe people learn to see life from other people who already see life. That means those of us who are aware of nature have a responsibility to pass on our knowledge.

I would have loved the nature walks you had in school. They would have made your whole day more pleasant.
I wish more schools were like that. 


The school on my street has raised beds on the front lawn, full of plants that the children tend. It gives them a nature connection. Sadly too few schools are like that.
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Catherine

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