What supermarket botany tells us about student perceptions of plant structure.

Supermarket Botany laboratory activities are an excellent way to enthuse students about plants, by building a scientific basis around their existing “real
life” botanical knowledge. In Supermarket Botany practical sessions, verbal responses from students indicated a wide range of understanding of plant
structure. Thus, at the beginning of our first Botany practical sessions in 2010 and 2011 we surveyed 134 students, in their first year at university, about their existing knowledge of the structure of common fruits and vegetables. There were two main findings. Firstly, knowledge of the differences between fruits and vegetables was good, even for fruits that are considered vegetables in everyday life
(e.g., tomato, pumpkin, cucumber). Secondly, there was a strong tendency to call anything that grows in the soil a root, which was good for some items (e.g., carrot, beetroot, sweet potato) but not for others (e.g., potato, ginger, onion). While some of these misconceptions are probably well known, this is possibly the first time they have been quantified. The results provide a unique view of student perceptions of plant structure that indicates the need to clearly teach the differences between stems, roots, and leaves. We provide some suggested
examples to accomplish this.