When we are out walking I am often frustrated by my inability to identify wild flowers.

Some of them are familiar from childhood, when I would play with other children in the meadows surrounding our village.

Back then, I could name most, if not all of them - stitchwort, willowherb, knapweed, chickweed, sorrel, harebells… My favourite was the milkmaid, or cuckoo flower, with its pale lilac petals. It grew in the wetter parts of the meadows, around ponds and looked beautiful among the buttercups and reeds.

Now, with the exception of the obvious – buttercups, celandines, daisies and things like that – I struggle to remember one. I even forgot what forget-me-nots look like.

It used to annoy me, when my daughters were growing up and I wanted to impart these important things. They were not, like me, raised on nature walks. We did at least one a week in primary school, walking along, staring into hedgerows, our teachers clutching little guides to British wild flowers.

Even as we walked to the school dining hall - a Scout hut at the opposite end of the village - we would be given a running commentary of the wild flowers and trees along the way.

York Press:

Field study: A colourful display of wild flowers. But how many could you name?

Today’s youngsters - who spend most of the time inside staring at screens - don’t know anywhere near as much about the natural world around them as we did. Numerous surveys and polls in recent years have revealed how half of children are unable to identify wild flowers, animals and insects.

Much of this is the fault of adults. Take wild flowers - there are so many rules and regulations surrounding wild flowers, that children are often scared to go anywhere near them. I looked up the laws surrounding wild flowers and, while it is definitely against the law to uproot them, I could not understand whether it is illegal or not, to pick them. It seems to be down to local bylaws.

Not that everyone wants to pick them, but when we were young we often gathered a pretty mix and brought them home for our mothers to put in jam jars. If they are growing profusely, and not endangered, I see nothing wrong with it.

Even adults are perturbed by these perceived levels of protection. When walking among bluebells in spring, I saw parents shouting at their children, forbidding them from going near the blooms. It is one thing getting children out in the fresh air, away from computer screens, but it defeats the object if grown-ups instil a sense of fear into them for getting too close to nature. Of course, it would be wrong to allow them to trample over plants, but we need to loosen up a little.

I personally would like a refresher course on wild flowers, to rediscover their names and characteristics. I can’t understand why I have forgotten so much. I blamed it on age, but my mum, at 80, is like a human field guide to the hedgerows of Britain.

She knows all the names. “What’s that?” I asked on a recent walk. “Speedwell”, she replied, quick as a flash. And it went on, as she identified a host of others.