Linderwell and colleagues wanted to understand how different backgrounds and experiences shape how young adults visualise plants. By analysing nearly 700 college students’ drawings, they discovered most students share surprisingly simple mental images of plants, suggesting a widespread lack of detailed plant awareness.
The researchers asked students at six colleges to draw four pictures: a plant, a flower, grass, and a tree. Such drawings were scored based on the number of features. They also collected information about students’ backgrounds, including whether they lived in cities or rural areas and their experience with art and plant identification.
Surprisingly, college students drew plants with almost the same level of detail as third-graders: most students drew daisies when asked to draw flowers, simple lines for grass, and basic trees with a trunk and cloud-shaped crown. Moreover, contrary to authors’ expectations, previous artistic or plant identification experience showed no relationship to the number of features included in the drawings.
Previous research suggested that growing up in rural areas or having Indigenous cultural backgrounds might lead to more detailed plant knowledge. However, this study found these factors made little difference, suggesting that plant awareness might be quite generalised in some regions.
Linderwell S, Hargiss CLM, Norland J, Comeau P. 2024. Utilizing drawings to understand how our backgrounds and experiences change our plant mental models. Plants, People, Planet. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10592 (OA)
