Plants are incredible organisms, making up around 80% of all the biomass on Earth. However, despite their abundance, many people just don’t seem to notice plants. Dr Shannon Woodhouse, Education Programme Co-ordinator, explores this phenomenon.  

Look at the picture above, what was the first thing you saw? I can guarantee it was Rex the cat and not the beautiful crocuses next to him. 

Going unnoticed – why do plants blend into the background? 

For over twenty years people have been trying to find out why plants are often overlooked, even though they are all around us. There is ongoing discussion in the science community about what term we should use to describe this phenomenon, with the most favoured suggestion being “plant awareness disparity”. The term “plant blindness” has often been used, but this term is a disability metaphor, equating a disability with a negative trait. 

The tendency for most people not to notice plants seems to be hardwired into our brains, perhaps as a result of the challenges early humans faced. The threat animals posed to early humans seems to have made us more likely to identify their movement, so the sedentary nature of plants means they just don’t stand out.  

Plants can often look similar. Our eyes process approximately 10 million bits of data per second, but seem to filter out non-threatening objects, like plants, and group them together. 

Finally, it has been suggested that many people don’t notice plants simply because they have no affinity with them. It has been demonstrated that children recognise nonhuman animals as living before they recognise plants as living. These anthropocentric ideas appear to extend into adulthood, sometimes leading to a lack of interest in plants. A good example of this is the lack of funding for plant conservation efforts, compared to animal conservation. But our plants deserve a little love too; 45% of known flowering plants are estimated to be threatened by extinction. 

Why is it important to see plants?

“Plants are the most important, least understood, and most taken for granted of all living things” Wilkins 1988. 

Plants are vital to life. They play an important role in nearly every ecosystem. For many organisms they support life by providing food, oxygen and shelter. They promote biodiversity, prevent soil erosion, and will be an important tool in helping us to tackle climate change. 

Plants are remarkable. They have a rich history. Orchids have been found to date back 83 million years. Plants stand among giants; the largest tree on Earth stands at over 80m tall. They can even be carnivorous, with some pitcher plants known to digest small mammals. 

There is still so much we don’t know about these amazing organisms and there are species yet to be discovered. Between 2020 and 2023, more than 8,600 new species of plants were scientifically named. 

Here at the John Innes Centre, we are an independent, international centre of excellence in plant science, genetics and microbiology, with ongoing research into making food crops more tolerant to climate change, to developing more effective or new medicines from plants.  

I think plants are incredible, but you can’t get excited about something you don’t know is there. So, step outside and look around, you might be surprised by what you notice on your own doorstep.