What kind of airplane is that?

I observed students using our species cards to find invasive upland plants. Here's what screamed out. Plug your ears.

1. A leaf is a leaf. A red berry is a red berry. A rose hip is a rose hip.

2. Because my teacher told me to look for this plant, it should be here.

3. I need to find something. Finding nothing means I'm doing something wrong.

While the ringing in my ears has not stopped, here are some initial thoughts and reactions and questions....

1. Of course all of the leaves and fruits look the same to an untrained & largely uninterested eye. Just like to me an airplane is an airplane, beer is beer, fruit flies are fruit flies, toothbrushes are toothbrushes. To start seeing the differences among planes, beer, fruit flies, and toothbrushes someone would really need to convince me that it was well worth my time. So how to convince and guide and make this species identification business more simple and engaging and fun...? The species cards as they are don't cut it. Should one or more of the "look closely" activities we developed be mandatory? They seemed to work for Sue, Diana, Mike....

2. At what point in our education system is this type of thing ingrained in learners? Will the traditional teacher-learner relationship and cookbook science mentality be a surmountable hurdle? Or are we better off on the edge?

3. How can we better communicate to students (and teachers) that looking hard and finding nothing is the best possible result? At the same time, if finding nothing is rewarded, how do we ensure the looking hard part?