Impact of Plant Blindness

Daily Lives

People encounter different types of plants in their everyday lives. They remember names of animals but
not for plants because they receive less attention and gets underestimate compare to animals, some
people tend to step on them without knowing their values and importance. Most people usually don't
stop to look at plants and engage theirselves in plant activities. Plants have become a great help for
human's essential needs but due to plant blindness, they tend to overlook it's benefits and positive
impacts. People's brain tend to group plants together because of their similarities in color and also
because of their fixed motion. They tend to underappreciate plants around them which result to
devastating consequences not only for the environment but also for human health (Ro, 2019).

Plant Conservation

The plant conservation initiative has been delayed and has received significantly less funding than
animal conservation projects. A possible cause of this may be that humans tend not to know or value
the plants in their environment (Balding, Williams, 2016). When people do not notice plants as often as
animals, they tend to be uninterested in them, ignorant about them, and have a less positive attitude
towards them (Parsley, 2020). Plant blindness limits the interest of people in plant conservation. And
with less exposure to plants comes bigger effects of plant blindness. Due to plant blindness, the plant
conservation projects are receiving lower demands which can result harm to people's health and
environment in the future.

Society

Education

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190425-plant-blindness-what-we-lose-with-nature-deficit-
disorder

Ro, C. (2019, April 29). Why “plant blindness” matters — and what you can do about it. BBC Future.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190425-plant-blindness-what-we-lose-with-nature-deficit-
disorder
Balding, M. & Williams, K. J. (2016). Plant blindness and the implications for plant conservation.
Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 30(6), 1192–1199.
https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12738

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27109445/

Parsley, K. M. (2020, November 1). Plant awareness disparity: A case for renaming plant blindness. New
Phytologist Foundation. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ppp3.10153

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ppp3.10153