I asked this month’s featured guest, Liz Leech, to identify the aspect of plant biology she finds to be most unfamiliar to the public. She replied…
The most unfamiliar aspect of plant biology, and the greatest barrier, seems to me to be the ability to distinguish plant characteristics and therefore to differentiate between plants within generally recognizable broad groupings such as trees, grass, ferns, moss, flowers, seaweed etc. Most people can put typical examples into these rather loose “groupings” of plants but are lost as soon as they have to be more specific and have to look more closely at less obvious examples. For instance, I have found that most high school students, when faced with assessing how many different species there are in a patch of lawn, only recognized the existence of lawn daisies if the flowers were still left on! After mowing they gave 100% grass! Smaller plants and different grasses were certainly not “seen”.
ArtPlantae Today 