Use It Or Lose It

I've come to realize that many people I know can barely tell one plant from another. Yes, they may know a tree from a weed, or maybe a shrub from a cactus. According to science journalist Zöe Schlanger, "'plant blindness' is the tendency to view plant life as an indistinguishable mass, a green smudge, rather than as thousands of genetically separate and fragile individuals, as distinct from one another as a lion is from a trout."To one degree or another, most of us suffer from plant blindness, at least compared to our ancestors. For much of human history, knowing the subtle differences between plants was much more a matter of life and death than it is today. When we lived closer to nature, it was important to know, say, which red berries were delicious and which might kill you; which leaves could alleviate your headache and which could cause seizures; which you could wear and which could cause a rash. But today, we tend to come across "plants" as products in the form of berry baskets,…