Towards an anthropology of plant names: Part 5: Exploring perceptions of the whole.

So far in this series we have explored the classification and naming of plants as we work towards a way of understanding the foundations of natural history.
This approach has followed a thread of consciousness that looks to the origins of localised folk taxonomy while also exploring the ‘scientific’ constructs that result in the given nomenclature of any individual plant. This narrative has been pursued by exploring a variety of approaches, including concepts of human ecology, as a lens through which to appreciate the relationships between people and their social and physical environments, but also to overcome unconscious bias which in the world of plants can lead to ‘plant blindness’. This term means we tend to underappreciate the flora around us; to what degree is subject to ongoing research as there seem to be differences in level of appreciation between different cultures today, but there has also been a quiet attrition over time.