Even Greener Pastures

A generation or so ago, people in Britain did know the names of everyday flowers, trees, birds and so on.  Now they don't.

There've been lots of studies in the UK on what's known as the 'Nature Deficit' and the results are heartbreaking. For example, a few years ago they did a test on some primary school kids, showing them pictures of Pokemon creatures alongside some common British birds and animals. It turned out the kids could name the imaginary characters without any problem at all, but they failed to recognise even a robin or a blackbird. In another study, their parents fared no better.

What's even sadder is the updates to the Oxford Children's dictionary. In recent years, they removed words like 'acorn' and 'dandelion' to make room for 'vlog' and 'selfie stick'.

Now to your pictures. Sadly, kids don't learn about flowers at school. Off the top of my head: dandelion, some kind of nettle?, some kind of daisy?, don't know but it looks garlicky, poppies, lily of the valley, forget-me-not, thistle, probably a buttercup but not too sure.   I also know the French names for those that I'm sure about.

How did I do?

Why would 'great' not be positive?

I don't think I've ever seen a chicory flower (though I note that one of its names is 'blue daisy', so I wasn't far off), and I'd never have guessed the plantain one. Are those common in the Czech Republic?

I grew up with the Cecily Mary Barker flower fairy books, so most of my flower recognition ability comes from those.

Here's the very cute chicory fairy:

I don't think "you did great" could be taken the wrong way, though, could it?

No, I don't think it could. I'll take it as a genuine compliment and shan't quibble over the lack of adverb 
 

So, here's the question:

We're wandering through the flower-filled Czech woodlands and pastures and we pick a posy of wildflowers to present to our loved ones. Which way up do we carry it? See video below:

https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-to-hold-a-bouquet-of-flowers-upside-down

Ah, the well-known Eastern European bouquet grip!

So it's true, then? You folks really do carry bouquets with the heads pointing downwards?

Not weird per se.  The only thing that's weird is that there's a difference. If we were to draw a line down a map of Europe, with a flowers-up icon on one side and a flowers-down one on the other, where would the line go? I wonder if anyone's ever done that?

In fact, the heads-down approach is quite sensible. I have heard that there's a practical reason - maybe something about all the planty sappy goodness draining down into the flower heads making them last longer? If I picked a handful of, say, leeks and carrots, I'd probably carry them home from the allotment pointing downwards.

We have dandelions, daisies, and poppies here. The others I did not recognize, know the name of but looked similar to plants I have seen.

I frequently have ¨projects¨ learning particular kinds of things in Spanish.  My garden, landscape, and nature project was the most difficult project for which to find teachers.  I used the series ¨Big Dreams, Small Spaces¨ that is British.  Most of my teachers were at a complete loss to know the names of flowers, plants, gardening tools, landscaping features, etc.  I found two young ones that were interested and enjoyed looking up the terms and learning them along with me.  I only found one teacher, probably in her 50´s, that actually new most of the terms in Spanish. 

One thing I learned in the process partly was that young, economically challenged city-dwelling Venezuelan college graduates just haven´t had much exposure to that.  I also learned that gardening is much less popular in Spain and Spanish speaking countries than in England or some parts of the U.S.

Apparently the climate of England is similar enough to where I live that we have a lot of the same plants-- but of course it is very different than the warmer climate of most Spanish speaking countries.  I also understand that there are many more species of wildflowers in tropical places-- maybe it is just too overwhelming trying to spend time identifying them all, especially for young city dwellers.