The earth's little saviours

Pupils need to learn about plants if we are to avoid ecological disaster, writes Caroline Haydon

Does it matter that we can't tell a buttercup from a celandine, or that many city children have never seen either? To the ecologist Michael Holland, head of education at London's celebrated Chelsea Physic Garden, it does very much.

"In 20 years time we will need double the number of plant conservationists just to work on saving species we have now," he says, shepherding an enthusiastic primary class around some of Chelsea's immaculate collection. By that time, of course, these five and six year olds will be able to fit the bill, should they keep their enthusiasm.

Today the children, from Our Lady and St Joseph's Roman Catholic Primary School in Hackney, are being taught the relevance of plants in a very direct way. Hands are raised when they are asked if they ate plants for breakfast - the wheat in bread. No hands are raised when they are asked if they are wearing plants. A few whispy balls of cotton attached to the sticks they grew on are produced, to help explain that they probably are.

Inevitably, stories of city children failing to recognise that milk comes from cows or bread from wheat abound, but Michael Holland says it is very often true that children are dangerously unaware of the world around them. "I see it regularly on most school trips," he says. "I've even had children exclaiming at seeing the orange root and feathery leaves of a plant and having to be told it's a carrot."

Parents of vegetable-averse children might not be too surprised, of course, but there is a serious point here. As many as two thirds of the world's plant species are in danger of extinction during the course of this century, according to a millennium declaration by the group of countries signing up to the Convention on Biological Diversity. If we are to halt this loss, we need to understand the role of plants in providing medicine, clothes and food, and to learn how to recognize and record them, say biologists. If we are ignorant about the diversity around us, we can't save it.

At Chelsea, Michael Holland has developed a novel way of getting the point across - putting potato plants in crisp packets, maize in popcorn buckets, or a pineapple plant in a juice carton. It's simple, but effective. The Physic Garden, so called because it was founded by the Society of Apothecaries in the 17th century, has a long tradition of education as well as conservation and research. Then, it promoted the study of botany in relation to medicine, then known as the "physic" or healing arts. Now, around 2,000 primary and secondary children a year take a tour around its 5,000 species, revelling in esoteric delights such as the mandrake (well known to Harry Potter fans - J K Rowling often mentions plants in her books) or a 12-foot high avocado tree.

Holland's predecessor in the education department at Chelsea, Dr Dawn Sanders, now researcher at the Centre for Informal Learning and Schools at King's College, London, believes we need to develop ecological literacy. "There's a lot of plant study at primary level, but it dies a death in Key Stage 4", she says. "The big fear is there won't be enough taxonomists in the future to name and catalogue species that are threatened."

The concern that taxonomy is a dying art is echoed by Dr Gill Stevens, UK biodiversity manager in the department of botany at the Natural History Museum. "When I was looking for a degree course in botany I had a wide choice of university departments," she says. "Now it's fairly limited. In conservation you need to be able to recognise what surrounds you and there are fewer and fewer people with that sort of expertise. There are a lot of amateur societies out there filling the gap, but many of these are dependent on an ageing membership rekindling an interest that was fostered in their youth. It's worrying that when today's younger generation gets to that stage they might not have any interest to rekindle." Even the ratings success of the BBC's Springwatch depended more on older viewers.

The Field Studies Council, which promotes out-of-classroom activity as part of the curriculum, recognizes that lack of time, fear of accidents and litigation, plus the cost and low status of field activities, is diminishing the chances of many children getting out into public spaces and gaining that sort of enthusiasm. The marketing manager Cathy Preston says much of the training organized by the council now has to be in taxonomic (categorizing) skills. "It is making up for the fact that you can do biology at A Level and university and go on to be an ecologist and still lack identification skills," she says.

And if we have a limited number of people who can respond to government and international calls for action, it will matter, says Stevens. "There's a sense of urgency in the world now about biodiversity and conservation. Plants tell us about climate change. The government has signed up to the biodiversity convention and committed us to action. Now we have to be able to respond to that."

There have been some advances. The Salter's Institute and the Nuffield Foundation have joined forces on a new A level biology course taught through real life contexts, including plants and climate change, which starts this September. Science and Plants for Schools (SAPS) works with teachers and students to develop new resources and encourage more to follow careers in plant science. In addition, the Field Studies Council has joined the RSPB, the National Trust, 3D Education and Adventure, and the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust to promote the Real World Learning Campaign, in order to encourage politicians to see the benefit of outdoor activities (the provision of which they say should be judged by Ofsted along with indoor classroom work).

The hope is that children will be able to study and appreciate plants for themselves, rather than use them as a means to an end. "Even when students are studying biology they are very often doing applied work in which the plants might be used in an experimental model for something else - they are not necessarily studied for themselves," says Stevens. A recent study of 816 A level Biology students showed less than half (41 per cent) could name one wild flower out of ten they were shown. Some certainly think the time has come to redress the balance.

The five- and six-year-olds' shrieks of delight as they discover the plant and animal life at Holland's Chelsea pond, remind us that fieldwork can be fun, too. And who knows, it might help save the world.

Chelsea Physic Garden Fair is on Sunday, 26 June (see www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk for more details). Field Studies Council: www.field-studies-council.org

Science and Plants for Schools: www.saps.org.uk

Botanic Gardens Conservation International: www.bgci.org.uk