Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Plant Communication


Grandpa Greenman

Recommended Posts

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.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 64
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • zandore

    9

  • frogfish

    9

  • Raptor

    8

  • Pagan_2k

    6

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....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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....

YES :tu:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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....

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 see you changed your name.

Do you think they scream when vegans eat them? :innocent:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Edited by zandore
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey this is great, I could use this same link all day long :w00t:

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

Edited by exe11er
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Nice post. :tu:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey this is great, I could use this same link all day long :w00t:

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

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

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

:lol: READ YOUR OWN LINK!

Doing the Chicken strut again?

user posted image

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

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

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

Thanks. ;)

Edited by Raptor X7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Are you sure you worded that right?

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

Thanks. ;)

If his source is "questionable" how well can you trust the information? :td:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

The injured plants release chemicals (eg methyl-jasmonate) that induce surrounding plants to release volatiles (eg nicotine) to make their (uninjured) leaves distasteful to ohter herbivores. Some release these volatiles which create a awful smell for the herbivores to drive them away, depending on the herbivore.

Its a very primitive form of communication, just basically a warning signal.

:tu: lowbro..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you sure you worded that right?

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

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

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Face it zanny, you lost this round :tu:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The injured plants release chemicals (eg methyl-jasmonate) that induce surrounding plants to release volatiles (eg nicotine) to make their (uninjured) leaves distasteful to ohter herbivores. Some release these volatiles which create a awful smell for the herbivores to drive them away, depending on the herbivore.

Its a very primitive form of communication, just basically a warning signal.

A good example of allelopathy. :yes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.