Finally – the leaves are out, the flowers have begun to bloom, and I think it has stopped snowing for a few weeks. Yes, I was feeling somewhat pessimistic when I began reading books for this column. You see, one of my favorite reads involves plants, and after I read a bit about plants I want to go out and do some planting or gardening (translation: weeding), or at least look at flowers. This spring was not conducive to those endeavors. So, instead of reading a bit and gardening a lot, I gardened very little and just kept reading about plants instead.
You might want to fasten your seatbelt (so to speak) for the rest of this because my recent reading involves plant intelligence and behavior. At this point you are either scoffing, rolling the ol’ eyeballs, or becoming intrigued. If it’s the latter – read on.
“The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior” by Stefano Mancuso started this whole thing. Mancusco is considered the world’s leading authority of plant neurobiology. I am big into neurobiology in my own field – which has nothing to do with plants – so when I came across a neurobiologist who explores the signaling and communication of plants, I got pretty well jazzed up. After all, most of us have been taught to believe that plants are one of the lowest of life forms right down there with amoeba, paramecium, and sponges. Scientists are proving this notion to be incorrect. Plants, we are now told, have far more on the ball than was previously thought.
In fact, when plants and animals last shared a common ancestor about six hundred million years ago, it was believed that during that split animals got the better end of that bit of mitosis simply because they could move around and plants were rooted (I will get back to the roots later) to the earth. This was a mistake. Plants learned to adapt to new environments by using sunlight (photosynthesis) to get energy, rather than dashing across the savanna after a fleeing antelope. The plant’s success is pretty clear. Plants are everywhere quietly basking in the sunlight, while most animals are pestering the dickens out of each other up and down the food chain. How do those plants manage all this? As I read, I discovered how plants demonstrate memory without having a brain, how they move without having muscles, how they mimic other plants to get a free meal of nutrients – while evading hostile armies of munching ruminants – and without totally giving away the ending – how plants demonstrate distributed intelligence (hint: it’s in the roots, just don’t tell anyone who is reading this book that I gave some of it away).
In any good book there is a bibliography, and Mancusco’s is no exception. While perusing said list of references, I noted that a certain Monica Gagliano, PhD kept cropping up. It seems that Gagliano teamed up with Mancusco to build a research study involving “plant bioacoustics.” The study was designed to determine whether or not plants could tune in to water running. In other words, how plants “hear.” Once again, without giving it totally away, the botanical duo proved that the root tips clearly bend toward a sound source whose wavelength is similar to that of waterborne vibrations.
This was the first reference I had on Gagliano, but not the last. She also showed up in Daniel Chamovitz’s excellent revised edition, “What A Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses.” Chamovitz is the dean of the Faculty of Life sciences and Director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University. Just to drop a few of his credentials, so you know he is not some new-age crank with a direct psychic line to all sentient life in the Pleiades system. Anyway, Chamovitz’s original book did not contain much in the way of how plants are aware of their surroundings, because the research at the time was not as intense or as thorough. Times have changed, however, and now he has humbly acknowledged his previous shortcomings, which include an admission that not all is known about plant intelligence. You see, most scientists have the notion that what they accept as true – because they are the group in the know – is the real deal, the ultimate truth, the genuine article; and anyone who disagrees is clearly wrong. They are often like pack animals, all following the leader and never striking out on their own with new or diverse ideas. You may run across that same belief system in other areas besides botany.
In any case, Chamovitz discusses plant senses with the same vim and vigor as Mancusco, but with a lot more technical words and fewer glossy pictures. So, if you are ready to roll up your sleeves, don your spectacles, make a pot of tea and sit down for a good, solid read nothing can do you better than this volume. He covers the way plants “see,” “smell,” “taste” (those roots again!), “feel,” and yes, “hear.” This is genuinely cracking good material and he expands his investigations to also discuss how plants remember. Chamovitz accomplishes this by describing a series of experiments done with the “sensitive plant.” The “sensitive” part is because when touched or jostled, this plant folds up its leaves like a collapsible tent and stays that way until the threat is over. But, according to the current research, not after it has “learned,” and “remembered,” that the specific jostling is not a threat! No folding, no huddling close to the soil. Rather, the plant stands proud and tall in the face of short elevator drops, a few tickles, and other assorted minor assaults dealt by the inquiring scientists. Really good stuff. And now here comes Gagliano again.
Monica Gagliano is an evolutionary ecologist and a research affiliate at the Environmental Institute at the University of Sydney, among her many accomplishments. She has published an amazing number of papers including the above-mentioned ones on bioacoustics, and plant memory, both with Mancusco. Gagliano has also experienced an epiphany. “Thus Spoke The Plant: A Remarkable Journey ofGroundbreaking Scientific and Personal Encounters With Plants,” is her recording of this enlightenment.
Gagliano started out her academic career as a solid (read that as: following the pack – see above) scientist who finally thought better of the whole “follow along no matter what and don’t rock the boat” mentality and struck out on her own. In other words, she started thinking for herself. This caused no end of trouble for her, starting with ridicule from her colleagues, threats to cut funding, and personal nastiness from adults who should know better. She persevered and the result is that she consults with plants. I told you to fasten your seatbelt. After studying with indigenous shamans, experiencing rigorous ceremonies with Native American medicine women, and traveling the world searching for trees to teach her, Gagliano has become one who can communicate with certain plants for the benefit of both plants and animals. Botanical consciousness may not be in your current vocabulary, but just consider it for a moment. Is it conceivable that with all we have learned about plants from the aforementioned books, is there the possibility that plants can and will communicate with us even as they communicate among and between themselves?
Read her journey after you are well grounded in the new information about plants, and then open up to the idea that we are living in a world of varying intelligences in nature that all have a voice if we can only tune in and hear. Think about it and have a good read!