![]() This special issue of Plants, People, Planet brings together a wide range of perspectives on the topic of “plant blindness”-the widest to date in one issue-with contributions from scholars working across a diverse range of disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to plant science, conservation, and ecology. For instance, in the face of climate change, diminishing biodiversity and increasing extinction (IPBES Global Assessment Report, 2019), humans need not only to notice plants in their daily lives, but also to engage more deeply with understanding their “plantiness-the set of characteristics and capacities specific to plants” (Fleming, 2017, p. Twenty years on, further work is required on the challenges they set society (Balding & Williams, 2016 Ro, 2019). ![]() ![]() In the late twentieth century, two American biologist educators, Wandersee and Schussler, provoked an important debate with their theory of “plant blindness”. And yet, many of us struggle to even notice their existence, a phenomenon described as “plant blindness” (Halpin & Mckim, 2019 Wandersee & Schussler, 1999 2001a). Indeed, “we rely on plants for food, shelter, fuel, and fibers for clothing, as well as for our gardens, landscape, and artistic inspiration” (Hiscock, Wilkin, Lennon, & Young, 2019). Even the oxygen in the air we breathe is the result of their biological processes. Our physical and cultural environments are infused with the lives of plants.
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