ghboring plants, and will actually pick the one that it finds tastiest! In one classic experiment scientists showed that dodder prefers tomato to wheat because it prefers the smell.
3B. How about hearing?
This is a bit trickier because while loads of research support the idea that plants see, smell, taste and feel, support for plant auditory prowess is indirectly proportional to the amount of anecdotal information we have about the ways in which music may influence how a plant grows.Many of us have heard stories about plants flourishing in rooms with classical music. Typically, though, much of the research on music and plants was, to put it mildly, not carried out by investigators grounded in the scientific method. Not surprisingly, in most of these studies, the plants thrived in music that the experimenter also preferred.
From an evolutionary perspective, it also could be that plants havenât really needed to hear. The evolutionary advantage created from hearing in humans and other animals serves as one way our bodies warn us of potentially dangerous situations. Our early human ancestors could hear a dangerous predator stalking them through the forest, while today we hear the motor of an approaching car.
Hearing also enables rapid communication between individuals and between animals. Elephants can find each other across vast distances by vocalizing subsonic waves that rumble around objects and travel for miles. A dolphin pod can find a dolphin pup lost in the ocean through its distress chirps. Whatâs common in all of these situations is that sound enables a rapid communication of information and a response, which is often movementâfleeing from a fire, escaping from attack, finding family.
But plants are rooted, sessile organisms. While they can grow toward the sun, and bend with gravity, they canât flee. They canât escape. They donât migrate with the seasons. As such, perhaps the audible signals weâre used to in our world are irrelevant for a plant.
All that being said, I have to cover myself hear by pointing out that some very recent research hints that plants may respond to sounds. Not to music mind you, which is irrelevant for a plant, but to certain vibrations. It will be very interesting to see how this pans out.
4. Do plants communicate with each other?
At a basic level, yes. But I guess it centers around how you define communication. There is no doubt that plants respond to cues from other plants. For example, if a maple tree is attacked by bugs, it releases a pheromone into the air that is picked up by the neighboring trees. This induces the receiving trees to start making chemicals that will help it fight off the impending bug attack. So on the face of it, this is definitely communication.
But I think we also have to ask the question of intent (if we can even use that word when describing plants, but humor me while I anthropomorphize). Are the trees communicating, meaning is that attacked tree warning its surrounding ones? Or could it be more subtle? Maybe it makes more sense that the attacked branch is communicating to the other branches of the same tree in an effort for self survival, while the neighboring trees, well theyâre just eavesdropping and benefiting from the signal.
There are also other examples of this type of communication. For example a very recent study showed that plants also communicate through signals passed from root to root. In this case the “talkingâ plant had been stressed by drought, and it “toldâ its neighboring plants to prepare for a lack of water. We know the signal went through the roots because this never happened if the two plants were simply in neighboring pots. They had to have neighboring roots.
5. Do plants have a memory?
Plants definitely have several different forms of memory, just like people do. They have short term memory, immune memory and even transgenerational memory! I know this is a hard concept to grasp for some people, but if memory entails forming the memory (encoding information), retaining the memory (storing information), and recalling the memory (retrieving in