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Societal Impact Statement The phenomenon known as “plant blindness” leads to a restricted view on nature, which may in turn result in people and society having less understanding of important environmental and conservation issues. Biology educators must tackle this problem directly. By exploring students’ interests in useful plants (spice plants and stimulant herbal drugs), we present a route by which educators could counteract plant blindness by taking students’ plant‐related interests into account when preparing a teaching unit. We reveal that educators must carefully select the plant materials used as examples in the classroom to effectively encourage plant vision in students. Summary The term “plant blindness” describes the phenomenon that many people tend to overlook plants in their everyday life. Therefore, they often do not understand key biological concepts to their full extent and may develop a more restricted view of nature. Here, we provide a possible method of counteracting plant blindness in schools by capitalizing on students’ interest in useful plants to impart botanical content in biology lessons. We investigated 172 students aged 10–18 years old in order to explore the links between students’ individual interests in spice plants and stimulant herbal drugs and their situational interest during an inquiry‐based botany teaching unit by using a questionnaire and additional semi‐structured interviews. Data analysis shows that, for students with low and medium individual interest, stimulant herbal drugs and spice plants can be used to generate higher situational interest. Furthermore, students with initially high individual interest should get the opportunity to follow their own questions concerning a plant group before working on a structured learning task. Using study objects from different subgroups of useful plants for introducing botanical content in biology lessons, and giving highly interested students time and space to follow their own interests, seems to be a promising way to counteract plant blindness and, thus, to help enable students to develop a more comprehensive view of nature.

Societal Impact Statement It is critical that people understand the importance of plants to all life on Earth, and this must be taught in an understandable and engaging way at an early age. Plant reproduction provides useful real‐life examples for teaching students about the biology of plants. However, what do students actually know about this process? We asked students to complete one of three writing tasks to ascertain their understanding of plant reproduction. Their responses provide useful insight into their conceptions of plant reproduction. Ultimately, better knowledge of students' conceptions of topics like plant reproduction can provide educators with important insights to help guide and improve teaching of plant biology in schools. Summary Teaching botany is a challenge due to the phenomenon of “plant blindness” and students' general lack of interest in plants. The reproduction of flowering plants can serve as a useful topic for teaching botany by providing a real‐life context to aid learning. However, research has shown that students have difficulties in understanding how the stages of plant reproduction are connected. This study aims to examine students' conceptions of the processes of plant reproduction. Students' conceptions were analyzed in a multi‐method approach. A total of 724 students from fifth to 12th grade (aged 10–18 years) were assessed using three different types of writing and drawing tasks. Students' conceptions were analyzed in a qualitative content analysis. Results show that students struggle to differentiate between pollination and seed dispersal. Moreover, students have better knowledge about the function of seeds than about the function of pollen. Students are most familiar with seed dispersal by wind and pollination by bees. Better knowledge of students' conceptions can greatly aid teaching. Students' awareness of the function of seeds can be used as a starting point for teaching plant reproduction. The writing and drawing tasks of the study can be used in class to assess students' conceptions in an easy way to make conceptions and their development visible to both students and teachers. Knowledge about students' conceptions of plant reproduction can serve as a basis for deeper understanding and improve how plant biology is taught in schools.

The paper presented examines how useful plants can help counteracting "plant blindness" -a phenomenon leading people to overlook plants in everyday-life. Recent research indicates that people are most likely interested in useful plants, hence this group of plants could be used to trigger interest in botanical content in general. This study has investigated the structure of interest in five subgroups of useful plants (medicinal plants, stimulant herbal drugs, spice plants, edible plants, and ornamental plants). For this purpose, the FEIN-questionnaire (Fragebogen zur Erhebung des Interesses an Nutzpflanzen = Questionnaire acquiring interest in useful plants) was filled in by N = 1,299 pupils from grade 5 to 12. Data analysis shows (for all age groups and both genders) that medicinal plants and stimulant herbal drugs trigger high interest while spice plants, edible plants and ornamental plants raise only lower interest. However, mean values do not allow conclusions on an individual level (e.g. in a school class). In order to gain information about the interest structure in a specific target group teachers deal with in practice, we have analysed the interests on an individual level using frequency analysis of different interest types. Results show that stimulant herbal drugs seem to strongly polarize students, whereas medicinal plants are interesting for almost the whole sample. Eventually, medicinal plants turned out to be well suited to introduce botanical content by means of plants catching the interest of as many students as possible. Therefore, medicinal plants should be established as flagships counteracting plant blindness.