WANDERSEE, JAMES H.1* and ELISABETH E. SCHUSSLER2. 1Louisiana State University, 15-Degree Laboratory, Room 223-F Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803; 2Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy, 540-B Telfair Street, Augusta, GA 30901. - Plants That Draw a Crowd: An Analysis of the Visual Characteristics of Six Unusual Plants Featured at Botanic Gardens.
David Hershey (1999), a leading US authority on teaching about plants,
noted that "Nonscientists are often fascinated by studies of
unusual plants such as Rafflesia [pricei], the world's largest
flower, and carnivorous plants, or germination of thousand-year-old
lotus seeds. The value of those [research] studies is not diminished
because people make money writing about them in popular books or
producing PBS shows about them. Rather, botany gets some much needed
publicity." In a follow-up effort to explain scientifically what
we have dubbed the 'marquee plant' phenomenon, and to derive some
implications for improving public understanding of plants and
botanical learning, we analyzed the visual characteristics of several
unusual plants commonly found at botanic gardens, using selected
vision science metrics. The six plants we studied were Agave
americana (century plant), Amorphophallus titanum (titan
arum), Araucaria araucana (monkey puzzle tree), Musa
sapientum (grocer's banana), Lithops lithops (living
stones), and Victoria amazonica (giant Amazon water lily). We
also used Krippendorfian content analysis of written accounts of
botanic garden visitors' responses to these plants as a cross-check
when drawing our conclusions. Results of our study indicate, for
example, that the public attention and curiosity aroused by these
marquee plants may be explained, at least in part, by using
marquee-plant-specific visiometric data and Solso's INFOPRO human
visual information processing model. We then used our findings to
propose a visual-cognition-based 'Limiting Cases learning strategy'
which can be used to anticipate which plants may function as marquee
plants, and to explain how they might serve as springboards for
botanical learning about findamental plant science concepts and
principles--both in informal and academic botanical educational
settings.
Key words: botanical education, Limiting Cases learning strategy, marquee plants, public understanding of plants, visual cognition