SO, the National Parks Board has a campaign to get people to recognise 10 different types of trees.
Can you name this tree? (Answer: It is a rain tree.) An NParks campaign hopes to encourage people to learn to recognise 10 different types of trees. -- ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERNI'm not sure I can even name 10, let alone recognise them from their leaves or bark or flowers.
Which sets me thinking: The youth green movement, which pushes for recycling, environmental protection, and climate change agreements at Copenhagen, is now louder and stronger than ever.
But what does greenery mean to us on a personal level?
When I was about six years old, my father and I would go on walks on Sunday mornings at East Coast Park, and he would teach me the names of the plants and trees around us.
We played a game: I had to name a plant as I walked past it, or else it would, my father warned, uproot itself and chase me. Ixora! Hibiscus! Bougainvillea!
I can now reliably inform you that terror is an excellent motivation for learning.
Thanks to my father, I can recognise the scaly, cracked bark of a mahogany tree and the fiery orange-red beaks of the flame of the forest, and I even know that the Botanic Gardens' logo is the bright red heart of a sealing wax palm.
Somewhere along the line, however, I grew up and stopped bothering. I can't even name you half the plants in the rooftop garden at my office.
I like having them around. But because I don't know what they are, I can't be bothered with their survival. Some gardening contractor can do the job...
That is why I think NParks' 'Know 10 Trees' initiative, which is aimed not just at young people but at all citizens, is important and timely.
Even as the abstract concept of environmentalism gains ground, we are losing the ability to identify the actual plants and animals around us.
Lest anyone suggests this is too difficult, I will argue that we are already experts at taxonomy.
Why, most of my girlfriends can spot a genuine Louis Vuitton bag from a fake at 20 paces, or tell a Lexus from a Toyota Camry at a hundred yards. See? We are pretty good at it.
Why is knowing the names of trees so important?
I believe it is an integral part of our sense of rootedness (pardon the pun) and, indeed, citizenship.
It is only when you know you are going to live somewhere for a while that you bother to learn the names of your neighbours, where they work, or what their hobbies are.
These native plants are the country's natural heritage. But who knows how long that natural heritage will stick around?
Botanists now know more about the ways that urban growth drives native plants extinct. And urban growth is something we have in spades.
I don't just want to care about the environment. I want to care about my environment because I can touch it, smell it and see it, and because it is all I've got.
And in turn, I hope that seeing and sensing the very real state of environmental and climate change might just scare the next generation of young greenies straight, just as it did my six-year-old self.
It is time to go and introduce myself to some trees.