Botany courses at academic institutions are dwindling worldwide, yielding too few graduates to replace retiring botanists (see, for example, go.nature.com/sdcagw). Yet botanical expertise is fundamental to a range of topical issues, including biodiversity, agricultural development, biofuel production, drug discovery and food science.

The public can find it hard to differentiate between even common plants, so botanists should engage more in outreach efforts. They also need to devise fresh approaches to teaching upcoming generations about the importance of plants, relying less on pressed dead specimens and focusing on new molecular and systematic tools. This more contemporary treatment of the subject could help to counter botany's lack of appeal to students and research-funding agencies.

Only then can courses move beyond standard taxonomy to important applications such as the discovery of new genes and gene functions. Let public outreach bury botany's old-fashioned image once and for all.