Due to the fast-moving and busy lifestyle across cities, people are spending many days in a row without touching plants and trees, and as a result, they are becoming less sensitive towards plants by the day, and are ignoring the flora. In research conducted by the Exeter University of Britain, it has been determined that people of every age group are slowly getting separated from all sorts of activities related to trees, and this rampant phenomenon has been named ‘plant blindness’.
In the study, people were shown pictures of forests, which had both plants and trees and animals. They were then asked about what they could see in the photograph, after which even though the people told about the animals, they ignored the flora, and this is plant blindness as well.
A large number of days pass by with people not touching a stem of a plant or looking at the leaves of a tree with a focus. Many people do not understand plants and trees because they have never spent even a little amount of time amidst greenery. Nevertheless, the people who are directly dependent on plants and trees and remain in constant contact with them, tend to know about them at a much better scale, especially people from rural communities, who are more interested in trees and plants and have more knowledge about the same.
This happens because they are dependent on plants for crops, and in the cities, people are less dependent on plants and trees, and as result, fall prey to plant blindness. As per researchers, a negative impact on people’s plant knowledge has been laid because of expanding urbanization and modernization. Despite this, plant blindness can be reduced by spending time in forests and gardens and by going amidst plants and trees.
In a study published in Plants, People, Planet, it has been stated that it is crucial for people to be made aware about the direct benefits of plants in producing medicines and their use in the industrial sector.
