"It's like color blindness: you can still see color, but you miss certain contrasts."
What is plant blindness?
"In 1999, botanists and educators James H. Wandersee and Elisabeth E. Schussler first introduced the term. They refer to it as a cognitive bias. In other words, when perceiving the world, you tend to focus more on certain things than others. There's a hierarchy in that perception. In the vast majority of people, plants often dangle somewhere at the bottom. That's precisely what plant blindness entails: you don't have an eye for them. When walking through a park, you're more likely to notice a charming cafe than, for example, the trees. It's comparable to color blindness: you can see color, but you miss certain contrasts. But that's certainly not the only thing. Much of what has been discovered in botany only penetrates the broader public to a limited extent. In addition to the lack of attention to the presence of plants, we also lack the knowledge, which means we don't recognize their added value."
"If you just look around closely for long enough, you will see that you are already in the middle of the Symbiocene..."
Is plant blindness a modern-day condition?
"No, not at all. It wasn't until the late nineteenth century that the idea of cross-pollination and the relationship between flowers and pollinators became common knowledge. For a long time, it was believed that plants self-pollinated. I find that intriguing. Humans were already keeping bees and making honey at that time. How is it that we remained so blind to certain connections in nature? The discovery that cross-pollination and flowers are linked can be seen as a scientific revolution, causing us to view the same phenomenon in a new way. This shift in perspective is also philosophical, as it encourages us to look differently at the familiar and perhaps even at ourselves."
What does the Symbiocene have to do with plant blindness?
"Our increasing urbanization results in a certain alienation from the plant kingdom, especially concerning agriculture. Trucks enter the city loaded with food, but we don't immediately connect it to its origin. Paradoxically, our entire urban society relies on plants, both in the construction of buildings and in the food we consume. Grains, corn, and rice constitute 50 to 60% of the daily caloric intake for the average global resident, highlighting the immense dependence on just three plant species. In short, we’re already living in symbiosis. The relationship with plants becomes apparent when we realize that our well-being is largely dependent on how well they’re doing. Furthermore, the successful cultivation of plants not only has direct benefits for us, but we’re also indirectly involved in the global dissemination of crops such as corn, where our well-being and that of the plants are closely intertwined."
"We're threads within the intricate web of life, yet sometimes we, as if weaving goddesses, sever other strands."
What’s the solution?
"We often talk about moving towards the Symbiocene, but at the same time, we haven't emphasized enough that we’re already part of it. A relationship that dates back to the early days of agriculture. The first farmers, and perhaps even before them, already exhibited forms of collaboration between humans and plants. We have convinced ourselves that we stand outside this whole system, that we have distanced ourselves from nature and stand above it in a certain way. Recognizing that we’re part of an ecological whole is crucial. Evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen articulates this very well: we are a thread in the web of life, but like a sort of Fates, we cut other threads. We let what we need to survive die out, while we are just a small part of the whole. I'm not calling for progress but rather a change in perspective. If you look closely enough around you, you'll see that you’re already in the Symbiocene."