How many people know our common wildflowers? The charity Plantlife commissioned a poll by YouGov two years ago to find out if people could identify wildflowers and discovered a shocking lack of knowledge. Most could not identify, or mis-identified, the common dog-violet, one of the most widespread wildflowers found in 97% of the UK, and only 6% of 16- to 24-year-olds correctly named it. There were similar results for red clover, another common wildflower. But most people said they would like to identify more wildflowers, although only about half of young people were so enthusiastic.
“There is definitely a lack of knowledge in the public about wild plants,” said Trevor Dines at Plantlife. “We respond more to animals than plants and most television nature programmes focus on animals and birds.” And he added that more education is needed. “We need botany on the national curriculum for schools, we want botany teaching modules.”
Small surprise that this disconnect with wild plants goes through to universities, where pure botany degrees have largely been merged into biology degrees. And yet it has never been more important to know about how wild plants are responding to the climate, their survival in changing landscapes, using them for medicines and food, and much else.
