Plant Blindness
Abstract
What does it mean to perceive the intelligence of living things? Evolution has made us who we are as a species but what happens when our evolutionary nature is the very culprit behind our disconnection with plants?
The phenomenon of ‘plant blindness’, coined in the 1990’s by biologist James Wandersee and botanist Elizabeth Schussler, sheds light on our human-centric point of view.
Considering that the plant kingdom is the largest form of life on the planet, our blindness is very problematic.
Two years ago, my dog and I moved to a new neighborhood in the heart of Copenhagen. Any dog owner in the city knows that the first thing you do is establish a path, preferably far away from traffic and other pedestrians. I was lucky enough to find a quiet tree covered path behind football fields right on the water’s edge. These forgotten backwoods is where I had my first true friendship with a plant.
It began by noticing the fragrant smell of dog rose petals in the spring, then I noticed a row of blackberry bushes and apricot trees in late summer. As the leaves fell, I began to notice the white snow berry bushes popping out.
After two years of walking the same path, I began to see the abundance of intelligence around me. So I tried to begin as any scientist or naturalist would - by documenting each species and classifying them by their latin names. Plant after plant was added to my sketchbook which grew into a tiny plant atlas of my neighborhood.
Taking the time to observe each plant not only gave me knowledge, but it also allowed me to form a relationship with each plant. Now entering my second fall, I regularly visit my favorite bush, Wild Privet, Ligustrum vulgare. The other day, I noticed a change in its appearance. The same bush from which I harvested berries last year to create a beautiful dark blue ink, did not germinate any berries this year at all. Rather, it’s stalks were bare and looked diseased.
Every time I walk past this bush, I experience feelings of sympathy, worry and sadness. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a relationship as “the way in which two or more things or people are connected”. By this definition, this plant diary was a way for me to build relationships, however slow, with my environment.
Noticing the intelligence of these plants leads me to wonder, how much do people know about the plants they walk past every day? What hidden properties do they carry that could benefit our health, or provide us with natural pigments to paint with? This Plant Diary is my personal way of slowing down enough to start a conversation with plants.
