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Plant Blindness and Tennyson’s The Flower

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Plant Blindness is the inability to appreciate the beauty and unique biological features of plants. Tennyson’s The Flower suggests that too much emphasis on the aesthetics of a plant leads to a decline of plant species that are deemed ‘unworthy of human consideration’.  A façade is created through the anthropocentric tendency to rank plants based on their appearance over their environmental role. That is, people claim to have an extensive socio-cultural awareness of the plant species by referring to its scientific name and criticising its’ appearance. In reality, very few are able to comprehend its’ ‘real purpose’ in the natural world.  This further highlights the notion that language, and the concept of plant blindness, have the power to exterminate the relationship between the human community and the natural environment.

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Once in a golden hour
I cast to Earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.



 
To and fro they went
Thro’ my garden-bower,
And muttering discontent
Cur’d me and my flower.


 
Then it grew so tall
It wore a crown of light



“Sow’d it far and wide/ By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried, ‘Splendid is the flower!’”



 

This page has paths:

  1. Plant Worlds: Photo Essay Sigi Jöttkandt
  2. E-Concept: De-peripheralisation Sigi Jöttkandt

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