The botanical education extinction and the fall of plant awareness

Abstract Civilization is dependent upon plants for survival. Plants permeate our every moment and our relationship with them will dictate how we will manage the threats of climate change and ecological collapse defining the Anthropocene. Yet, despite the significance of plants and the critical role they have played in shaping ecosystems, civilizations, and human cultures, many people are now disconnected from the botanical world. Students are presented with little plant content, particularly identification, compared with animal content. Consequently, we are producing few plant scientists and educating fewer scientists about plants. This drives a self‐accelerating cycle we term the extinction of botanical education. A process of knowledge erosion, that in this instance contributes to our separation from the natural world, makes us blind to the biodiversity crisis and inhibits our ability to restore it. We argue that neglecting the importance of plants within education threatens the foundations of industries and professions that rely on this knowledge. Furthermore, this extinction of botanical education creates an existential threat: Without the skills to fully comprehend the scale of and solutions to human‐induced global change, how do we as a society combat it? We present key research agendas that will enable us to reverse the extinction of botanical education and highlight the critical role plants play on the global stage.

and sustenance and are the basis of nearly all terrestrial ecosystems (Lev-Yadun et al., 2000). Plants perform a huge variety of essential functions, from forming soils to producing oxygen, yet their neglect is costing us dearly (Bardgett et al., 2021). From birth to death, plants dominate every aspect of our existence-they are our silent partners in civilization (Adamo et al., 2021). There is virtually always a plant or a plant product in your field of vision. Despite this significance, plants are currently underappreciated and neglected in many sectors of modern society, and there has been little research into identifying the measurable consequences of our plant apathy toward societies' challenges (Amprazis & Papadopoulou, 2020;Jose et al., 2019). Globally, the picture is worrying: ~40% of plant species are threatened with extinction (Nic Lughadha et al., 2020). Human society is reliant on plants for the maintenance of our biosphere and life systems yet continued human activities place immense pressure on ecosystems and species.
We pose that a botanist had a wide breadth of skills to draw upon. This is beyond the ability to identify plants and recall specific species ecological knowledge but a broad spectrum of understanding from plant physiology, identification, taxonomy, ecology, genetic, and cellular plant biology. Botanists are trained not only in understanding plants from form to function and ecology to physiology but beyond their processes and function, to their social and cultural contexts.
Solutions and pathways to a sustainable future are directly linked to our understanding of plants and the processes and services they provide and facilitate (UN DESA, 2016). Plants will play a key role in achieving many of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Plants are fundamental to SDG 15, Life on land. Plants by biomass comprise the majority of the living organisms on Earth ( Bar-On et al., 2018), they provide the food source to nearly every single ecosystem. This is obvious regarding terrestrial ecosystems, but plants also play an essential role underwater as algae and phytoplankton. For example, plants can trap and convert radiation into renewable fuels, which may help the UN to meet several SDGs including Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) (Amprazis & Papadopoulou, 2020;UN DESA, 2016).
Further examinations reveal the utilization of plants relates directly to meeting all seventeen of the UN's SDGs (Amprazis & Papadopoulou, 2020), yet specific plant conservation objectives, such as the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (Jackson & Kennedy, 2009), have been poorly integrated into national biodiversity policies. Other objectives may lack a specific botanical focus or expertise (Sharrock & Jackson, 2017).
In the face of global change, there is no doubt that restoration of habitat and utilization of processes that plants mediate will be central to combating the looming climate and ecological crises of the 21st century (Queiroz et al., 2021). We ignore the opportunities presented to us by the botanical world at our peril.
Here, we highlight how the lack of plant awareness and the continued lack of detailed inclusion of plants in education have exacerbated this crisis. This situation drives us ever closer to losing our ability to build a sustainable and ecologically robust future.

| The state of botanical teaching in the United Kingdom
Given the critical importance of plants in addressing the challenges facing humanity today, is the role that botany plays in addressing global change recognized? There has been a call to action within the science to "engage the power of the public with the power of plants" (Crane et al., 2019). However, botany, once a compulsory component of many biology degrees and school programmes, is now practically nonexistent in the United Kingdom. Instead, the programmes offered are Plant Science or Plant Biology, and these are offered by only 11 universities (Table A1). The United Kingdom has recently announced the creation of a Natural science GSCE (Gov.uk, 2022).
This could provide more plant identification and ecology in formal schooling; however, it is unclear yet as to what the focus of the curriculum will be, although flora and fauna are listed first in popular content themes (Oates & Duffy, 2020). Depending on the content and format, there is again the risk of reducing plants to processes.
There is additionally the question of who will teach it. Many teachers may have little experience to teach plant identification and ecology.
We argue that these plant-specific degrees are too few and current general biology programmes may not offer the broad spectrum of plant knowledge that is needed in light of progressing global change.
Doubly, we believe the problem starts much earlier in education.
Within the UK's primary national curriculum, students are only required to identify and name a variety of common wild and garden plants during their early school years with little additional plant ecology or natural history, while no identification skills are taught in secondary education (Table A5). Plant teaching in secondary education is focused on bioenergetics, reproduction, and anatomy with little on plant ecology and no identification skills. In our analysis of the UK School Curriculum, we note few references to exploring plant diversity and ecology, mostly for young children (Table A5). One study of A-Level biology students in the United Kingdom found only 14% could recognize more than three species of native plants, a trend which matched their teachers' botanical skills (Bebbington, 2005).
Elsewhere, a similar experiment in the United States found college students could, on average, only correctly list a single species of wildflower, "weeds," or grasses when tested on these groups separately (Wagner, 2008). However, there is generally a dearth of studies in this area, with few studies attempting to understand UK students' botanical skills within higher education.
It has been a decade since a student was enrolled in a solely botanic degree in the United Kingdom (Drea, 2011). Of course, the nomenclature of the degree awarded is less important than the education provided: Botany is but a word (Drea, 2011). Throughout their experience of education, biology is predominantly taught by teachers and academics that come from a background of studying animals rather than plants (Colon et al., 2020). Wandersee and Schussler (1999) argue that often even knowledgeable biologist educators may offer only a cursory glance at botany often only in the context of animals. Future to this, opportunities to engage with field botany may be considered expensive, high risk, and logically time-consuming by institutions and schools (Lambert & Reiss, 2014;Thomas & Munge, 2017). It is this decline in engagement and uptake in teaching students about the fascinating biology of the plant kingdom which is the hidden extinction (Drea, 2011); however, when students are exposed to plant content often their reaction is positive (Barratt, 2011;da Silva et al., 2012). We should seek to deliver a botanical education, one in which the degree awarded is recognized  (Table A2). Additionally, we calculated the attrition and recruitment of students to plant science degrees over this period and found that on average there was an average 5.5% gain in student recruitment to these programmes when compared to their first-year cohort (Table A3). Although there was a wide degree of variation in this, with a wider cohort having a large degree of attrition and recruitment (Table A3). For example, the 2009/10 cohort and the 2012/13 cohorts lost 20% and 39% of their students whilst the 2007/8 and 2008/09 increased in cohort size by 25% (Table A3).
We also note that there may be some overlap with agriculture and forestry courses, while plants, plant processes, and plant products may be a strong focus of these degrees' students are unlikely to develop a strong species literacy within these programmes as they focus on specific subgroups of plants for very specific purposes, not broader plant diversity and ecology knowledge. However, we find little evidence within the literature to confidently access plant awareness in the UK agricultural and forestry education sectors.
To further investigate the plant content of UK biology degrees, we selected all biology degrees and programmes provided by Russell Group universities. We chose Russell Group universities as these are some of the UK's leading research and teaching institutions. With the majority frequently being featured within the world's top 100 universities ranking and dominant in attracting research income (Shattock, 2017). We, therefore, felt that these institutions would therefore provide a valid overview of the teaching biology student receive within the UK higher education sector.
From the latest available module catalogue, we extracted the total number of modules offered across the degree programme and then pulled out modules which contain some degree of plant content as per the module description. We then categorized them into one of several categories. These categories were: We additionally pulled out those modules which focused on animal or zoological content for comparison (Table A1)

Biology in the Lab and Field, and Urban Ecology and Conservation Field
Course. We excluded Cambridge and Oxford due to their unique degree pathways which did not fit into our analysis framework. There is a degree of uncertainty to this method as the delivery of teaching content may likely change periodically or may not be explicitly stated in module titles or descriptions. We recognize that this method does not take account of teaching on degrees outside of biology programmes and some plant content for modules may not have been included within module descriptions (e.g., many Geography degrees will include some plant-focused teaching).

Of the 971 modules offered within biology degrees by Russell
Group universities in the United Kingdom, we estimate that only 6% (n = 63) had a clear plant biology emphasis and only 1% (n = 10) had a significant emphasis on plant identification (Table A1). Additionally, the modules offered mostly focus on physiology or agricultural and industrial application of plant science (Table A1). More alarming is the content of plant biology programmes. Modules with a dedicated plant focus contribute only 22% of taught content, and plant identification components are rare, accounting for only 1% of modules (Table A4). For both biology and plant biology programmes, we note a sizable proportion of ecology and associated life science modules; however, often these referred to plants and habitats in generic and nondescript terms, generally alluding to animal and human case studies rather than having a clear plant-focus (Table A1).
It is often that plants are seen as background characters in the story of an ecosystem, they are simply passive set-dressing for the lives of the animals which live out their dynamic lives (Balding & Williams, 2016;Yorek et al., 2009). There is a need for people to understand the ecological role, value, and knowledge about species and ecosystems. This concept is known as species literacy. Species literacy is more than naming species: It is knowledge not just of an organism's biology, environment, life cycles, and other key ecological details, but also competencies and skills such as observation of species and application of knowledge from multiple plant-related disciplines (Hooykaas et al., 2019;Magntorn & Helldén, 2005). Integrating concepts such as species literacy into education will enable students to engage with and better value the full spectrum of ecology. We argue that without the integration of identification, plant ecology, and field skills students are limited in their capacity to understand and value the species and processes within these systems.  (Wandersee & Schussler, 1999). This animal-focused view, referred to as zoochauvanism, results in diminished plant content within education from primary to university level and globally results in the loss of botanical knowledge, skills, and appreciation (Hershey, 1996).
Plant blindness is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that encompasses several different aspects related in complex ways. Plant blindness is not only an exclusively sociological and cultural phenomenon but also a multifactorial phenomenon that is affected by evolutionary and cognitive factors (Balding & Williams, 2016). Balas and Momsen (2014) conducted a study on "Attentional blink," a phenomenon in perception related to visual attention, and the results of the study suggested the visual system may process plants in a manner that may contribute to plant blindness (Balas & Momsen, 2014).
They argue that botanists and educators should focus on the design of material that increases plant awareness and directs students in how to compensate for and overcome these inherent perceptual limitations (Balas & Momsen, 2014). These sentiments have been mirrored by others in the field; for example, Balding and Williams further discuss cultural factors in the differing appreciation of flora and fauna (Balding & Williams, 2016).
However, it should be noted that various other terms for plant blindness have been suggested including "plant unawareness" or "plant awareness disparity" (Parsley, 2020). This language places negative connotations on those experiencing these phenomena and various educators have suggested alternative concepts such as fostering "plant awareness" (Bacon et al., 2021).
Many young people are aware of the challenges facing our communities and enthusiastically engage in actions such as climate activism (O'Brien et al., 2018) but are not taught about plant diversity and ecology. To continue to inspire people, we need to teach them that they are part of an ecology, and to do this, a botanically species literate education is essential (Stagg & Donkin, 2013). Compounding this is the occasionally flippant attitude toward the skills of botanists (Manzano, 2021), with some describing elements of botany as a descriptive discipline without scientific rigor (Crisci et al., 2020). To continue to lose plant-focused education, we lose opportunities for students to engage with the botanical world.
We suggest that, as more botany departments are lost (Sundberg, 2004), plant ecology pared from curricula, and amateur and professional botanists retire (Crisci et al., 2020), we are at a heightened risk of losing collective generations of knowledge.

| The global context
This appears to be a global trend. In the United States with the dissolution of botanical institutions, Crisci discusses the current "process of pervasive denigration" of the science (Crisci et al., 2020). The threat of skills debts has also been noted in the Australian plant agricultural sector, where concerns over the small number of agricultural experts to fulfill future food demand have been raised (Merriman, 2012). We suspect there is a ubiquitous loss of identification skills across botanical and environmental sectors; however, we found no studies which explore this.
What is better documented is the decline in taxonomy, which has been noted since the 1970s (Hopkins & Freckleton, 2002;Lee, 2000;Tilling, 1987). Efforts to address these skills gaps have been unsuccessful, with training and recruitment failing (Drew, 2011;Ely et al., 2017). In the United Kingdom, the situation is urgent. A review found that "taxonomy and systematics in the UK is unsatisfactory -in some areas to the point of crisis" (Boxshall & Self, 2011). One of the key concerns of the report was the lack of young individuals entering the workforce with taxonomic skills.
There is no evidence that the situation has changed in the last ten years. Beyond the decline of the science of taxonomy, there is the "extinction of experience," coined three decades ago by Robert Pyle, which describes humanity's ongoing disconnection with nature (Miller, 2005).
Pyle describes disconnection from nature via a "cycle of impoverishment that is initiated by the homogenisation and reduction of local flora and fauna, followed by disaffection and apathy." Ultimately, this impoverishment is intensified by a "shifting baseline," progressively decreasing expectations of the quality and function of the natural areas individuals are exposed to (Miller, 2005).
It has been suggested that the extinction of experience may be a crucial social-environmental influence of our time, directly dictating the public support for environmental action and policy (Gaston & Soga, 2020).
Building upon Pyle's and others' work on plant blindness, we We are not the first to recognize this phenomenon of botanical knowledge loss. Multiple papers have discussed the decline of botany as a science (Crisci et al., 2020;Drea, 2011), but often these papers have focused on the threats to biodiversity (Baldini et al., 2021;Prather et al., 2004) without a focus on the broader existential threats.

| Capacity building and defining risk
Capacity building is a system of action developed by the United Nations Development Programme to aid organizations to perform their duties more effectively. It is the process by which individuals are supported via policy and legal frameworks, institutional development, and community participation to develop skills, and knowledge and gain access to resources to enable them to perform efficiently (Moreno et al., 2017) and is a priority within many environmental conventions (Rawat et al., 2008). The Scottish government has acknowledged the workforce needed to effectively implement nature-based solutions (NatureScot, 2021), which F I G U R E 1 The fall of plant awareness and the extinction of botanical education. The decrease in plant awareness feeds into a cycle of diminishing knowledge of plants at both expert and general knowledge levels that will ultimately increase the risk of the biodiversity crisis and the potential for resilience and restoration in the face of anthropogenic global change are directly related to plant systems and processes (Amprazis & Papadopoulou, 2020), is currently insufficient in number, skills, and training (NatureScot, 2021). The UK STSC made a similar recommendation in their Nature-based solutions: rhetoric or reality, report. The report notes the United Kingdom does not currently have the necessary skills to effectively deliver nature-based solutions at scale, with emphasis on vegetation-based solutions. This has been acknowledged by the Government but there has been no formal assessment of the skills needed, nor the routes to providing training in the timescales required for a transition over the next decade (UK Gov Science and Technology Select Committee, 2021).
These skills deficits are firmly within the botanical realm, covering disciplines from forestry and ecology to peatland restoration (UK Gov Science and Technology Select Committee, 2021).
There have also been calls for urgent action in the British horticultural industry. For example, the Horticulture Matters Campaign supported horticulture and guidance within schools and promoted apprenticeships and horticultural courses in response to a growing need for horticulturalists (Biggs, 2014). The situation highlighted both the need and demand for plant awareness to be on the educational agenda, with one 2014 Royal Horticultural Society survey of 200 businesses finding only 32% could fill listed job vacancies (Biggs, 2014).
This principle can be applied to the extinction of botanical knowledge. The chance of a detrimental event happening is risk; there is a definable numeric value to the extent of the anticipated loss and the likelihood of occurrence (Saynes-Vásquez et al., 2016).

The 2010 UK Taxonomy & Systematics Review noted that university
training was failing to produce appropriately competent graduates or postgraduates (Boxshall & Self, 2011). There is a push to reverse this shortage: For example, in 2019, the United States reintroduced the so-called "Botany Bill" in response to alerts from agencies that could not find skilled botanists to deal with invasive plants, wildfire reforestation, and basic land management and fears that through attrition almost half of botanical experts the United States will retire without replacement (Crisci et al., 2020).

| Palaeoclimate reconstructions
Botanical studies have been critical for understanding the evolution and structure of terrestrial ecosystems and the interactions of plants and the atmosphere as well as understanding how plants have responded to previous periods of mass extinction (McElwain & Punyasena, 2007). Studies of stomata helped understand how plants respond to changing atmospheric CO 2 and how much this has changed over geological time (Woodward, 1987). Studies of plants and palaeobotany are critical for understanding how plants have responded to periods of intense global change in the past and help us to understand and predict how they may respond to changes in the near-term and far future.

| Invasive non-native species
The cost of invasive species to global economies is staggering with many of the highest impact species including plants (Zenni et al., 2021). In South Africa alone, the damage to fynbos ecosystems is estimated to exceed US$11 billion, with some species such as black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) amounting to damages approximate to US$1.4 billion (van Wilgen et al., 2001). The inability to identify invasive species or sounds botanical knowledge continues to exacerbate this problem, may people have poor plant identification skills and are thus unable to recognize invasive non-native plants, this feeds into reporting, spread or mismanagement (Hester & Cacho, 2017). As such, basic identification skills are increasingly important for the public to know if they have an invasive species growing locally and, particularly, to make informed decisions about plant purchases. Without a well-equipped, knowledgeable public, effective management of invasive non-native species, such as essential early detection is infeasible (Vander Zanden et al., 2010). Beaury et al. (2021), recently found that 61% of species listed as invasive in the United States remain for sale, which highlights a significant problem with sound ecological decision-making even among considerably plant-engaged people.
Beyond these impacts, there is so much more that comes from our relationship with plants. They inspire a sense of place (Elmendorf, 2008), support our mental and physical health (van den Bosch & Ode Sang, 2017) and many have significant cultural importance around the world (Kandeler & Ullrich, 2009). For example, the utilization of green space during the Covid-19 pandemic was the focus of a study that found the UK government's decision to enable residents' outdoor recreational activities delivered the equivalent of £1.14 billion in welfare benefits to residents of England (Day, 2020).
One study estimated the ecosystem services value of New York City's Central Park to be in the region of $70 million per hectare per year (Sutton & Anderson, 2016), while estimates of annual air pollution removal by the urban forest in the United States are valued at 3.8 billion US dollars (Nowak et al., 2006).

| REVERSING THE EXTINCTION OF BOTANICAL EDUCATION-PUTTING PLANTS ON THE AGENDA
Botanists and educators have documented the decline in botanical teaching for decades (Crisci et al., 2020;Drea, 2011;Godwin, 1968), but have we produced a clear set of definable and reportable actions and objectives to reverse it?
We suggest that the following research agenda be prioritized to enhance botanical teaching in schools and universities and counter the extinction of botanical education.
• To achieve this, a research baseline from schools and universities to identify the current provisioning of botanical teaching globally is needed.
(i) To understand current stances and perspectives of pedagogical professionals about the state of botanical education, student engagement, and ethnobotanical knowledge transfer and practice.
(ii) To develop a system for monitoring long-term trends in botanical knowledge across various demographics and related industries.
• A wider scope of pedagogical methods for enhancing plant identification skills and developing appreciation and value in different demographics and disciplines is needed. Educational curricula require a profound overhaul to better include the delivery of plant content. It is not necessary to recall esoteric taxonomic language and relationships but rather to elucidate plant stories, survival strategies, and relevance to contemporary society. We argue, plant knowledge can be taught from a variety of perspectives, and all are needed, but not everyone needs all.
Students should not leave school only able to identify two or three plants but should retain the knowledge of the ecological importance of plants to develop a species literacy, particularly the role of plants in solving modern societal challenges. Teachers, many of whom have not had a strong botanical education themselves, having been taught in a zoochauvinist world need to be empowered and supported to gain the skills to teach botany confidently. This zoochauvinist bias is difficult to unlearn and humans have been described as "everythingbut-mammal blind." If this bias is not acknowledged within our reversal of this cycle, efficient solutions will not be identified (Clark & May, 2002;Knapp, 2019). Many university students are engaging with ecology, but without strong identification skills, plants will continue to be background players in the stories of an ecosystem. There are institutions whose aims are to actively combat this extinction of botanical education such as The Gatsby Plant Science Summer School (Levesley et al., 2012); however, their focus is mostly on applied plant science rather than a broad botanical education.
We believe the key is to ensure a strong holistic plant narrative that focuses on plants' critical importance to society and global change in curricula that permeates primary through to university education. Framing personal narratives between individuals and plants enable us to increase nature connectedness, which is a better predictor of the pro-environmental conservation behaviors we wish to facilitate (Richardson et al., 2016). Now may well be the time, a recent paper has identified that over the last decade public interest in plant-related topics has increased, particularly with the advent of social media influencers, as such there may be a window of opportunity to develop an appreciation of plant science among the wider public, who to some degree are reconnecting with plants (Burke et al., 2022).
Botanists and others in allied disciplines can support these goals and ambitions but, ultimately, change needs to come from those who define policy. Policies must support the science and skills of botany in schools and universities. Hawken notes that fear of a future characterized by environmental degradation has rarely been an effective motivator for people; thus, it is now time to engage with botanical opportunities (Miller, 2005). As such, we must pose the extinction of botanical education not only in terms of financial risk but also in opportunities for positive social change for institutions, policymakers, and funding organizations. Increasing awareness of both the climate and biodiversity crises has led to increased engagement, particularly from younger generations (Wachholz et al., 2014). Botany has a significant role to play in supporting this societal transition and needs to be included in the solution. Increased botanical education is the first step to achieving this, and we should encourage the exploration of the beauty, fascination, and importance of plants from preschool to postgraduate.

| CON CLUS IONS
An invested and knowledgeable public is one equipped to drive environmental policy reform. A plant aware public will only be achieved through education at all levels. The extinction of botanical education will only continue to worsen unless we break the cycle of disconnection from the botanical world.
There is a critical need to address growing skills gaps in the general and botanical sciences and to reengage the wider public with the value of plants before we reach irreversible tipping points of knowledge and biodiversity decline. We must foster environmentally sym-

This work was supported by the Panorama Natural Environment
Research Council (NERC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), under grant NE/S007458/1.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
The authors state no conflict of interests.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the Supporting Information of this article.  Note: Data shown are all home/EU/overseas student for the years 2007-2019. Plant science and allies consists of botany, agriculture, forestry, and agricultural sciences. These data are rounded by HESA to the nearest five and as such there is a degree of uncertainty regarding the precise number of students. Note: Percentage change in graduating students after 3 years. HESA data are rounded to nearest five and as such there is a degree of uncertainly in the accuracy of these data.