There was a time when knowing your trees was a matter of life and death, because you needed to know which ones were strong enough to support a house and which ones would feed you through the winter. Now most of us walk around, to adapt a term devised by some botanists, tree blind. But here’s the good news: Tree blindness can be cured.

He laments that in big cities, children or even their parents have never scaled or felt trees. He chooses to call this phenomenon in urban areas, ‘tree blindness’. “People have this habit of ignoring the presence of trees around them,” said Khanna, who lives in New Friends Colony with his parents and younger sister.

In which I come out about my ridiculous tree blindness for the @pshares blog: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/cant-see-the-forest-or-the-trees/

A recent example of Australian-tree-blindness was Monty Don on his tour around the world in 80 gardens (on ABC TV earlier this year). He saw the flying foxes but didn't recognise the Aussie trees — or many trees at all it seems.