Our ability to identify plants is fading. It doesn't have to.

Six-year old Salo and his younger sister Lev run ahead of their parents as they walk along the seafront near Miami, Florida. They stop and call back to the grown-ups, pointing excitedly at the wet rocks along the shoreline. Their mother, Suzanne Kerpel, meets the children by the water, bending down to look more closely at the bright green succulent covering the rock. It’s edible, the children tell her. It’s called sea purslane. Together they pick its fleshy leaves and savor its saltiness.

Even at such a young age Salo and Lev are aware of more of the species living around them than many adults are. When most of us look at a green, leafy scene, that’s all we see: green. This failure to notice or identify plants is known as ‘plant blindness’, or by the less ableist term, plant awareness disparity (PAD).

Beyond green: Why identifying plants matters

Scientists see PAD as a widespread problem in the West. People are less interested in studying plants than animals, research shows, and they find plants harder to recall than animals. Perhaps because they don’t move, don’t make a noise and are unlikely to attack us, most of us forget to notice the plants that surround us. They are the green backdrop to the rest of life.

But plants matter. It is impossible to overstate how important they are for human life on Earth – they provide us with food, medicines, chemicals, clothing, shelter, the very air we breathe. The world’s forests and algae are some of our most powerful allies in keeping the worst of climate change at bay.

When we care about a specific species, we’re much more likely to help protect it. If zoo-goers feel connected to a specific species, for example, they are more likely to take action to protect it, such as ‘adopting’ an animal. At a time when the world’s green spaces are getting smaller, this kind of care and protection are more important than ever. Seeing plants – getting to know them – is the first step to caring about them.

A different type of school

The best way to tackle PAD, researchers suggest, is to change the way we educate children. Anyone can learn more about their local plants at any age, but a growing movement is creating more opportunities for young children to connect early on with the species that live near them. Modern ‘forest schools’ started in the 1950s in Denmark, but are now in at least 21 countries – from Canada and Colombia to Switzerland and Spain. Salo and Lev went to a forest pre-school, and Salo now attends a hybrid school that involves a lot of time outside.

Over in the UK, which is becoming a hub for forest school education, the number of schools has grown to an estimated 200 or more since the first opened in 1993. Forest school learning can take different formats but is usually part-time, and follows the central principle of learning outdoors regularly over an extended period of time. There are no age limits, with sessions available for mums with babies right through to pensioners in care homes.

Sarah Lawfull, a qualified teacher and chair of the UK’s Forest School Association, sums up the ethos of forest school learning: “You learn to look after yourself, to look after other people, and to look after the planet”.

School-age children typically attend forest school for a few hours each week, ideally over the course of at least two seasons. They go outside whatever the weather. “That’s something everybody asks about,” Kerpel says. “What do they do when it rains?” Salo and Lev spend time in free play: “They play, and they eat, and they go in the water sometimes, and they climb trees,” Kerpel says.

Lawfull has noted the growing need for children to be exposed to the nature on their doorstep. “I remember one mum talking about how, with her children, they’d swum with dolphins but they’d never walked in a wood,” she says.

With this disconnection from nature comes fear, Lawfull says. A lack of knowledge about plants means that “a lot of the time parents are scared. There’s a lot of fear that things are poisonous and that you shouldn’t touch stuff.”

The joy of adventure

Getting to know plants takes away the fear that many feel about the dangers lurking in green spaces. Kerpel recalls picking Salo up from forest school to find him crying – his hands were itchy from some blue berries that he’d been squishing. But his experience hasn’t fed his fear of plants – rather, the opposite. “He remembers that it was uncomfortable, and he doesn’t want to feel that again. He’s very aware to not touch that plant anymore. But that didn’t make him afraid to experience other things at school. He was ready to go back the next day and keep exploring.”

Though safety is key, the forest school approach values play and exploration as ways to overcome fear. When training forest school leaders, Lawfull introduces them to plantain – a small green plant with ribbed leaves, common in most countries – by “bending it over and flicking the seedhead at somebody”. They soon pick the plantain themselves, and flick them at each other. “Anything like that makes you look at the plants,” Lawfull says. “You only get that when you get people playing.”

A world where we can all identify plants

The fun of learning about and connecting with plants is contagious. Kerpel describes how children’s enthusiasm for plants can rub off on the adults in their life. “I think it’s kind of symbiotic,” she says. “They’re interested in their natural surroundings, so they make us more interested. And we want them to have that interest in nature, so we’ve tried to bring it to them as well.”

Sadly, the knowledge and confidence that comes from a forest school education isn’t available to every child. In the UK, many – but not all – state schools offer forest school learning, so it is free for some children. The forest pre-school and primary school Salo and Lev attend in Florida are not publicly funded, though they cost Kerpel less than other private schools in her area.

Learning about plants is just one part of what has made forest school valuable for Kerpel’s family, but has been integral to her children’s experience of the outdoors. She is glad her children could learn this way. “Just to be able to have a full childhood, full of play and of enjoyment and nature – it’s everything that I could wish for.”

For those of us still suffering from PAD – who can’t yet spot the itchy berries, or the salty sea purslane – Lawfull is clear on what we’re missing out on. “It’s a disconnection from that understanding that we are part of nature. It’s that simple and that big.”

When we ignore the many green species that we share our home with, we also overlook a source of much-needed reassurance in a world that is changing worryingly fast. “When you see nature at work and you understand how regenerative it is, you can have hope,” Lawfull adds. “It’s about understanding that this incredible planet is our home, and all the systems work if they’re allowed to work.”