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I’ve long ached to greet the greenery around me by name—I don’t want to be surrounded by strangers while hiking in a dense forest, or wandering through a meadow bursting with wildflowers. Conveniently, I’m now dating a horticulturalist, who’s helping me achieve some familiarity with the native plants in my part of the country. He’s far better than a book: Similar to learning a language, regular conversations keep the knowledge fresh. During our frequent treks through the woods, he’s around to answer my endless questions and test my ID skills.
But before I could even guess the species surrounding me, I carried a valuable intuition—I just didn’t know it yet. When entering a well-traveled city park or suburban trail, I could tell that something was off. Now, it’s clear to me that I subconsciously picked up on the domineering greenery that evolved to live in landscapes thousands of miles away, places far wetter and hotter than here. I could tell, somehow, that invasive plants were crowding these once-diverse oases.
I’m not alone in this intuition. Some people might instinctively pick up on biodiversity in a forest without any training, according to a study published last month in the journal People and Nature.
Researchers from across Europe asked 48 people, who were mostly psychology students lacking forestry or ecology training, to rank the perceived biodiversity within images of European forests and explain their reasoning.
Some of these amateurs’ ratings seemed to align with survey methods used by ecologists. In the visual test, people tended to associate particularly green forest images with more biodiversity. This association lines up with scientific measures for biodiversity, which is linked to an overall abundance of vegetation. A landscape with high biodiversity, for instance, can reduce competition between plants for resources and help plenty of greenery thrive.
Certain study subjects also completed a related assessment where they listened to audio recordings of bird sounds taken in the same German forests. The participants called out various aspects used by researchers to estimate bird diversity, including the “acoustic complexity” of avian songs and the number of sounds heard per second.
While I’m glad some of us might be hardwired to pick up on healthy, booming ecosystems, the paper has its limitations: The team surveyed a small group of people in a laboratory setting, for instance. It might have been more challenging for more participants to correctly estimate surrounding biodiversity while out in nature. In past research, Anthropocene notes, amateurs tested in a 2023 paper weren’t too skilled at guessing the degree of biodiversity while in forests.
Regardless of whether you excel at putting your finger on flora, that study suggested that the sites we see as biodiverse may boost our mental health—regardless of their actual composition—so get out there and explore. I know I will. 
Lead image: Paper Trident / Shutterstock
