Do plants communicate with one another? From some of the studies I have read the do. They seem use a chemical form of communication. I once read about an experiment where a tree was cut on one side of a forest and it was found trees on the other side of the forest reacted to it. (I can't find the study, but I am looking. I might have even seen it on this site if anyone remembers seeing it.)

Good question Dark...I certainly think they do in some way, they definitely respond to love and care, they definitely grow better under those circumstances....

I have also read things like this. Something about a tree that, if attacked by ants/insects, would release a chemical and other trees would sense it somehow and would release a bitter sap (?) to repel the insects from themselves. Basically one tree yelling "The bugs! They got me! Save yourselves!"

http://www.ezineplug.com/articles/12069/1/...Their-Needs-Met

Seems to be called Allelopathy.

YES

Care = Looking after the plant; feeding it, watering it, giving it sunlight etc.

...of course that will make the plant grow better; but it's not the emotions which alter its growth.

Allelopathy is the closest thing to communication among plants.

The idea that plants communicate chemically with one another has been around for a couple of decades, but it's only been in the last few years that solid scientific evidence has been accumulated to support the notion.

Over three seasons spanning 1996 through 1998, researchers from the University of California in Davis monitored wild tobacco plants growing near sagebrush. They clipped the leaves of some of the sagebrush plants to mimic the damage caused by insects. The sagebrush plants responded with a puff of a chemical called methyl jasmonate. In response, tobacco plants downwind immediately begin boosting the level of an enzyme called PPO that makes their leaves less tasty to plant-eating insects. Within minutes of the clipping of the sagebrush, the plants' PPO levels quadrupled.

It worked, too. Tobacco plants next to the clipped sagebrush suffered sixty percent less damage from grasshoppers and caterpillars than tobacco plants next to unclipped sagebrush.

Then, last fall, scientists at Kyoto University in Japan let spider mites loose on lima-bean plants and tracked the plants' responses. They found five different defense mechanisms. First, each injured plant released a chemical that changed its flavor, making it less attractive to the mites (although I personally nd it hard to imagine anything less attractive than the taste of a lima bean to begin with).

More: Plant Communication


It's not news anymore that plants may "cry in pain" when attacked or damaged by a hungry herbivore, but now we know that there is a way to stop all this vegetable "suffering" right in your medicine cabinet -- with simple aspirin.

Plants may not feel the pain of an injury as animals do, but they do have their own "alarm" reaction to tissue damage and, in an effect curiously similar to that in animals, this reaction can be short-circuited by aspirin and other similar drugs, according to a study recently published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

More: Study Shows Aspirin Blocks "Plant Pain"

I see you changed your name.

Do you think they scream when vegans eat them?

Ok I'm here, and I'll repeat myself:

1) Our best science to date shows that plants lack any semblance of a central nervous system or any other system design for such complex capacities as that of a conscious suffering from felt pain.

2)Plants simply have no evolutionary need to feel pain. Animals being mobile would benefit from the ability to sense pain; plants would not. Nature does not create gratuitously such complex capacities as that of feeling pain unless there should be some benefit for the organism's survival.

Well, as Oliver Goldsmith realistically observed, "Every absurdity has its champions to defend it". And yes, we have some defenders who would ignore common sense and argue for plant pain. Remarkable!.

http://tabish.freeshell.org/animals/plantpain.html

From a different thread
In addition to all the other links I have posted for you:

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

WARNING! This is some heavy reading.

Hey this is great, I could use this same link all day long

Here we have the authority of logic, science and "truth" being imprecated against the sorry state of AR nescience and "mythology". Yet, no single published book, or paper in a scientific journal, has been cited as indeed making this claim that "plants feel pain". Sure, there is interesting evidence about plants reacting to local tissue damage and even sending signalling molecules serving to stimulate certain chemical defenses of nearby plants. But what has this got to do with supporting the only morally relevant claim worth considering, namely that "plants FEEL AND SUFFER from pain"? Where are the scientific references for this putative fact?

Although the plant pain promoters are fond of reductios, they will not likely appreciate the following extension of their own. By their "logic", it would equally be the case that rain clouds behave purposefully in the sense that they could be said to functionally remove, by way of raining, excessive moisture that is causing their overstaturation.

Furthermore, rain clouds bear meaningful information about their level of oversaturation in the form of weight relative to volume. Do not clouds, therefore, "sense" (in some tortured notion of the word) when atmospheric pressure is insufficient for their moisture content to remain in a vaporous state?

The promoters of plant pain would have us believe, against our good common sense, that by the mere presence of purposive BEHAVIOURS of avoidance and REACTIONS to tissue damage in plants we therefore must attribute to plants mental states like that of some kind of "felt pain".

Well, then by the same logic we must do the same to clouds. In the hole that these promoters of plant pain would dig for themselves, not only must we accept the thesis of plant pain, we would also have to swallow some notion of "cloud sentience"!

http://tabish.freeshell.org/animals/plantpain.html

Nice post.

Thanks RX, haven't seen you around in a while, nice to see you're back

PSST exe.....look at the bottom of the web page and see what this guy is using as references

When you are done doing that look up his credentials.....

What does that have to do with anything? Tell me is it right or wrong?

What about when you prune their limbs off, they seem to like that and grow better? Maybe its like trimming their toe nails. Obviously trees react to their environment, and the environment reacts to them...so this would be a form of communication, right?

READ YOUR OWN LINK!

Doing the Chicken strut again?


You did not make it with the human/animal bit so now you went to plants.....

This thread is about plants...you can't hold the fact that he is replying about plants against him.

I agree the references to his source are questionable, but that's irrelevant, the information (at least what exe11er said) is correct, as far as I can tell.



Thanks.

Are you sure you worded that right?


If his source is "questionable" how well can you trust the information?

But if plants feel pain, what will the vegans eat, styrofoam?

Thats right. I guess its just water for the vegans.

lowbro sent me a PM regarding plant communication taht I thought was very interesting...



lowbro..

No. In fact I'm sure I didn't.



That doesn't make sense. I have prior knowledge on the subject; what the article states coincides with what I believe is scientifically correct. If I had no idea about the subject at all, that would be a different story.

Face it zanny, you lost this round

I feel people ignored lowbro's great "post"

A good example of allelopathy.

That is Gold !

Thanks frogfish



Yep thats the scientific name of the process involved.

Its only been recently studied because it would of just sounded far-fetched 10-20 years ago. Also it would of been very hard to measure the amounts of chemicals released by the leaves back then, but technology is pretty good now so we can measure these levels.
Plants release these chemicals all the time, but its the quantities or amounts that we are interested in when subject to herbivory.

lowbro excellent post, i would add that plants all have built in ways to protect themselves or survive...There are plants that are edible we eat some of these but there are over 30,000 known edible varietys..., some things have thorns, or smell bad or have spikes and its for a reason to keep certian things away including humans......As adorable as your question is Ericraven and Oracle and I did get a good giggle.....unless you don't eat plants its something you could answer for yourself lol.....




d.d.d. me from she.......

Last time I checked, the topic was Plant Communication, not Do Plants Feel Pain?

Oh, and yet another profound gem from Oracle... how he keeps that genius flowing is a genuine Unexplained Mystery.

Eric: Do you actually think about the anti-vegan comments you make before you share them?


What is so hard to believe that a living organism has a natural defense mechanism? Don't all living organisms have them?

[d.d.d. .... she from me]

Everyone knows that talking to plants helps them grow.

I read about an experiment where they hooked up plants to very sensitive devices like a polygraph and one scientist would talk to the plants and look after them etc, and another would hurt the plants, rip off leaves etc.

If the scientist that hurt the plants walked into the room, the plants would react straight away - and go into distress mode.

but if the scientist that was nice to the plants would walk into the room, the plants would react as well(not go into distress, obviously), they would even react when he had sex miles away (later confirmed).

You know why? Because you're breathing CO2 to them


I don't think plant can sense people...Plus, its impossible to hook up a plant to a polygraph machine...They don't have brains or hearts!

I look up Tabish's home page.
http://tabish.freeshell.org/

He a physicist and is some what qualified to speak on the subject, but that doesn't mean I agree with him. In his article he quotes Toby Bradshaw, unfortunately he doesn't site the paper he is referring to and Prof. Bradshaw has written so many I am not going to go through all of them to find the right one. Anyone is welcome to go through them if you're so inclined.
Here is his web site.
http://faculty.washington.edu/toby/



The reality is that plants do feel, and through allelopathy they to communicate what they are feeling to other plants. Is that just a by product of the plant's reaction to stimuli or is there intent. Communication implies intent, but in the case of a plant there is no way to know. Lowbro says plants release chemicals all the time. Do we know what each and every chemical is for? I would doubt it. They might be having a chemical discussion about the weather for all we know. Plants do worn other plants about danger, but is there intent? We don't know enough about them and how their cells exchange information to know for sure.
Alarm calls in the evolution of animals is the beginning of communication is it the same for plants. I don't know, do you?

Whats that got to do with anything?

A polygraph is a test that monitors five different sensors.
Mainly it picks up things like changes in conductivity, changes in current etc.
On people they use this to monitor your heartrate, sweat, etc based on the fact that your body reacts automaticly when you tell a lie.

Look it up. its been done.


Did you even think before you wrote this? You dont use a plant like a microphone if you talk to them?

LOL...you still miss the point? There is no electrical signals in a plant! They don't have a nervous system..."Communication" and reaction to stimuli in plants is purely chemical.


So? You still breat CO2 to them That is needed for photosynthesis (CO2)

That is true. Pagan_2K are you sure it was a polygraph? Do you have a link to a paper on the experiment?

he said "like" a polygraph, not an actual polygraph (which I'll Never trust. They Lie.)

I could've sworn plants did have a current of some sorts, and I thought it was "electric"... I thought all living things have this current, down to the cellular level?

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase...gy/enercyc.html
Energy Cycle in Living Things
A fascinating parallel between plant and animal life is in the use of tiny energy factories within the cells to handle the energy transformation processes necessary for life. In plants, these energy factories are called chloroplasts. They collect energy from the sun and use carbon dioxide and water in the process called photosynthesis to produce sugars. Animals can make use of the sugars provided by the plants in their own cellular energy factories, the mitochondria. These produce a versatile energy currency in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This high-energy molecule that stores the energy we need to do just about everything we do.

The energy cycle for life is fueled by the Sun. The main end product for plants and animals is the production of highly energetic molecules like ATP . These molecules store enough immediately available energy to allow plants and animals to do their necessary work.


How much do you think breathing near a plant will affect the concentration of CO2 in the general area. never mind outside.

@darkwind: Just google it. It was polygraph equipment, the test was first done in the 60's but they have done more research into it.

Look at all of the links that have been posted!




Not to mention DW's post (thank you my friend)


What makes you think I "lost"?

Let me ask again "how well can you trust the information"?

A lot...more than 50% of what we exhale is CO2


Good job! You just showed what is the product of cellular respiration - ATP. I am still waiting for you to prove the none-existent electrical current in plants needed for a polygraph...

Sorry, a polygraph wouldn't work

Ok, I'll make it bold and underline and copy and paste it slowly for you.

Energy Cycle in Living Things
A fascinating parallel between plant and animal life is in the use of tiny energy factories within the cells to handle the energy transformation processes necessary for life. In plants, these energy factories are called chloroplasts. They collect energy from the sun and use carbon dioxide and water in the process called photosynthesis...

Ok, now how about looking here...The Electrochemistry Encylcopedia
Electrochemistry of plant life
http://electrochem.cwru.edu/ed/encycl/art-p01-plants.htm

Here is the first paragraph in case its too long


Dude, long story short, plants have current - just like us.

Last time I checked, mitochondria and chloroplasts don't have electrical signals

Wow, never knew that. You're right

Here's another link I found in Nature
http://131.220.103.188/ahlavacka/AG-Volkma...antSynapses.pdf

Interesting. Nice one.

I found this on plant communication. here:http://www.edwardwillett.com/Columns/plantcommunication.htm

Far from being inert lumps, plants can and do communicate--both with other plants, and, interestingly, with insects.

Of course, we're not talking Shakespearean sonnets or even political speeches here. Plant communication is all based on chemicals.

The idea that plants communicate chemically with one another has been around for a couple of decades, but it's only been in the last few years that solid scientific evidence has been accumulated to support the notion.

Over three seasons spanning 1996 through 1998, researchers from the University of California in Davis monitored wild tobacco plants growing near sagebrush. They clipped the leaves of some of the sagebrush plants to mimic the damage caused by insects. The sagebrush plants responded with a puff of a chemical called methyl jasmonate. In response, tobacco plants downwind immediately begin boosting the level of an enzyme called PPO that makes their leaves less tasty to plant-eating insects. Within minutes of the clipping of the sagebrush, the plants' PPO levels quadrupled.

It worked, too. Tobacco plants next to the clipped sagebrush suffered sixty percent less damage from grasshoppers and caterpillars than tobacco plants next to unclipped sagebrush.

Then, last fall, scientists at Kyoto University in Japan let spider mites loose on lima-bean plants and tracked the plants' responses. They found five different defense mechanisms. First, each injured plant released a chemical that changed its flavor, making it less attractive to the mites (although I personally nd it hard to imagine anything less attractive than the taste of a lima bean to begin with).

Then the plants released other chemicals that drifted away. Other lima bean plants received the chemical and immediately begin giving off the same chemicals, making themselves less tasty and warning still more lima bean plants, before the mites even reached them.

Most amazingly, some of the released chemicals had the effect of summoning a whole new batch of mites--mites that, rather than eating lima bean plants, preferred to eat the spider mites attacking the lima bean plants.

The Japanese researchers even found that the plants could distinguish between insect damage and crushing damage. They crushed some leaves and stems and found that although the injured plants released chemicals, the surrounding plants ignored them, somehow recognizing no real danger existed. (It appears that substances in the attacking insects' saliva are required to trigger the anti-insect chemical response in the plant.)

Other examples from agriculture are also known. Corn under attack from armyworms, for instance, puts out a chemical signal that attracts a predatory wasp. The wasp lays its eggs inside the armyworm; when they hatch, the wasp larva eat the armyworm.

And a study released last week shows that this kind of signaling exists not only in agricultural situations and in labs, but in the wild--which means it is likely widespread throughout the plant kingdom.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, discovered that when a species of wild tobacco plant that grows in the southwestern United States is damaged by hornworms (the larva of the hawkmoth) it releases chemicals that attract predatory insects that kill the larva.

Such chemical calls for helps benefit both the plant being attacked and the predators, who would otherwise find it very difficult to find the larva, which are camouflaged and also tend to feed on the underside of leaves, where they can't be seen. Most likely the plant developed a chemical defense that predators evolved to take advantage of, but the result is the same as if the plant consciously sent out a cry for help.

Agricultural scientists are already looking for ways to use this new understanding of plant communication to improve the way farmers fight pests. For example, these kind of indirect defenses could be genetically engineered into crops so that they could more effectively summon natural predators. That could reduce the need for chemical pesticides--in fact, you'd want to avoid chemicals, because they would kill the predators you need to kill the pests. And whereas pests can develop a resistance to pesticides, they can't develop resistance to predators.

Thank you Pagan_2K I think that answers the question nicely. Do plants communicate?
Yes they indeed do.

Oh, how did I forget plant-insect communication! They can signal some insects to help polinate...or even defend the plant...Like the thorn acacia.

Cool, Do you get the idea I like plants? Especially trees, I keep bonsai's and live in a tropical climate with lots of trees



I've been hunting in a place called thabazimbi in the northern part of S.africa, its a beautiful place with red sand and every single tree is an acacia, I dont think there is anything without thorns in that place.

There is one type of tree that when being eaten by a grazing animal will release a signal that will make all the rest of them release a substance that makes them taste sour.

Aside from the non-existant study you posted it would seem to me that plants do not communicate. Plants have bio-chemical reactions for instance when fall arrives trees shed their leaves to conserve energy. Insects also do not communicate with plants. Bees for example feed off the necter of a flower. Flowers have evolved to adapt to this the bees suck up the necter and as a result the pollen sticks to it's legs, it then flies to another flower and pollenates it. In order to communicate several things need to be determined like higher cognitive functions. Since plants do contain brains or nervous systems they can only react. Plants also do not contain any method of communication. A plant regulates itself by releasing chemicals other plants in the immediate area may respond to these chemicals but purely on a reactive basis. Communication mean to relay messages plants are just not capable of this feat. Plants have not evolved to communicate and relay message types. Insect may also respond to their colours such as bees do or their scents but they do so purely on an instinctual basis. These chemicals and colours are more or less triggers not modes of communication.

Plants also do not feel pain since they do not contain nervous system. You could rip a leaf off a tree and it would not feel it. It would simply just replace the one you ripped off.

It has been shown that when a plant is damaged it will release certain chemicals. Other plants react to these chemicals and then release chemicals etc. Although it would seem like communication. It seems to me that plants simply have a more chemical reactive system of response as opposed to communication. This could be done through root systems in many cases like in trees where many trees have interwoven root systems.

It is not a communication persay although depending on how it is perceived could be. In my opinion it is more or less just simple bio-chemical reactions and responses. We have them too for instance humans release pheramones although we cannot sense them consciously it causes several neuro-chemicals to respond. It is why men are attracted to women etc. Well one of the reasons.

And that's a primitive form of communication.

yep, no different than when a africanized honey bee releases chemicals to other to swarm when its being damaged.

So plants can communicate, because the other plant(s) around it react in a specific way and thats to "protect leaves".

To me, that sounds like communication Ganja

The Plants Respond

Sometimes it happens that a person can name the exact moment when his or her life changed irrevocably. For Cleve Backster, it was early morning on February 2, 1966, at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds of chart time for a polygraph he was administering. One of the world's experts on polygraphs, and the creator of the Backster Zone Comparison Test, the standard used by lie detection examiners worldwide, Backster had threatened the subject's well-being in hopes of triggering a response. The subject had responded electrochemically to this threat. The subject was a plant.

Continue the reading here

Before this thread goes away I was wondering if anyone knows about Luther Burbank? Worth a google. A genius and true California hero. He even charmed the thorns off the rose and the prickers off the cactus.

Backster is on the right track but maybe you might check on Marcel Vogel, another genius with over 100 IBM patents to his credit.

Grow in peace,

Sambu