Plant Blindness

Plant blindness, also called plant awareness disparity or a lack of plant awareness, is a proposed cognitive bias describing a broad human tendency to ignore plant species: failing to notice plants in the surrounding environment, underestimating the importance of plant life to the biosphere and to human affairs, viewing plants as an inferior form of life compared with animals, and failing to appreciate the distinct features or aesthetics of plants. The botany educators J. H. Wandersee and E. E. Schussler coined the term in their 1999 publication Preventing Plant Blindness, and researchers have suggested various causes, including that plants are stationary and often similarly colored, that cultural practices shape how much attention people pay to them, and that people are simply more accurate at spotting animals than plants in rapid visual tasks, as one 2014 study using the attentional-blink method found. Journalists have also linked plant blindness to reduced funding and fewer course offerings in botany education.