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plants
Discovering Intelligence in Unexpected Places
If our human intelligence has discerned over thousands of years which plants are edible and nutritious and healing, wouldn’t the evolutional ingenuity of plants which feed and sustain us and all life also constitute intelligence?
Aug 27, 2024
From the largest to the smallest and the oldest to the youngest creatures on Earth—Antarctic blue whales and coastal redwood trees, minute bacteria and human beings—we are all enmeshed in layers of relationships. We need each other, though some more than others.
Plants evolved hundreds of millions of years before the first humans and transformed the Earth—through their creativity in surviving predators—into a livable environment for all animals, including humans. We needed plants for our evolution and need them now for our survival from climate disaster. They, however, did not need us for their existence and would survive without us.
Putting humans at the top of the evolution chain as the crown of intelligent life, a Western worldview, is—as some keenly grasp—mistaken. The baleful consequences of this simplistic hierarchy are everywhere: out-of-control climate change; accelerating rates of animal and plant extinction; dead zones in the oceans and mass mortality of coral reefs; the vast pollution of land, air, and water; and the mounting likelihood of human extinction with nuclear war. All caused by humans, humans with financial and political power much more egregiously than others.
Perhaps you have you noticed that late summer asters and goldenrod tend to grow as companions. Why? Together—their combined beauty—attracts more pollinators.
Certain scientists who study plants—from the simplest to the exotic—are stirring controversy with their “ Are plants intelligent?” Consider that we humans owe our lives to plants for their food, medicines, and critical balance of 21% oxygen in the air we breathe. If our human intelligence has discerned over thousands of years which plants are edible and nutritious and healing, wouldn’t the evolutional ingenuity of plants which feed and sustain us and all life also constitute intelligence?
Studies have found that elephants recognize themselves in a mirror, crows create tools, dolphins demonstrate empathy and playfulness, and cats exhibit similar styles of attachment as human toddlers. The given explanation is that they have brains with neurological capacity for consciousness and intelligence.
But plants do not have a central brain. Could their mode of learning to evade insect predators and maximize their growth come from a diverse form of intelligence, possibly be distributed across their roots, stems, and leaves? Could the whole plant, then, function as a brain? Recent studies of plants have stirred the possibility that they are conscious and intelligent. Take communication, something we humans claim as our domain through language and more recently acknowledge that animals also possess.
Botanists have found that not only do alder and willow trees alter their leaf chemistry to defend themselves against an invasion of tent caterpillars, but that leaves of faraway trees also change their chemical composition similarly. Warned, as they are, by airborne plant chemicals released from the original trees under attack. Goldenrods signal an attack by a predator through strong chemical communication sent to all other goldenrod neighbors, just as humans warn their neighbors about a nearby fire or flood or crime.
Without any recognizable ears, plants sense sounds. The vibration of a predator insect chewing on its leaves causes a plant to make its own defensive pesticide. Beach evening primrose responds to the sound of honeybees in flight by increasing the sweetness of its nectar to attract them for pollination. Tree roots grow toward the sound of running water, including in pipes, where the roots often burst through causing great difficulties for municipalities. How do the various plants hear these stimulating sounds?
Plants have memory, some anticipating from past experience when a pollinator will show up for the plants’ pollen. Plants express social intelligence: Members of the pea family form relationships with bacteria living in their roots to have the bacteria supply beneficial nitrogen for the plants’ growth. Several kinds of plants provide a home and food for compatible ants who then attack the plants’ ant pests. Perhaps you have you noticed that late summer asters and goldenrod tend to grow as companions. Why? Together—their combined beauty—attracts more pollinators.
In finishing, I express my immense respect for the Indigenous worldview where wind, rocks, air, and rain are our kin, together with plants and nonhuman animals. We, humans, the most recent beings, depend on all of these elder kin; and this awareness, this worldview of connectivity among all beings, is our path back to Earth well-being.
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Nearly Half of Flowering Plant Species Face Threat of Extinction
"Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth's ecosystems to full function," says a scientific report.
Oct 10, 2023
Global scientists warned Tuesday that 45% of known flowering plant species could be at risk of disappearing, underscoring the need for urgent international action to tackle the planet's sixth mass extinction—the first driven by human activity.
That figure is among the key findings from State of the World's Plants and Fungi, the fifth annual report from the U.K.'s Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew about such species amid the intertwined biodiversity crisis and climate emergency.
"The resources and services that nature provides—from food to fresh water—have arisen through eons of ecosystem-building by microbes (including fungi), plants, and animals, and their interactions with geochemical processes," says the report. "Because we are currently degrading ecosystems, releasing greenhouse gases into the air, and polluting water resources at such a rapid rate, we risk destabilizing the global equilibrium that these evolutionary processes have established."
"Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth's ecosystems to full function," the publication stresses.
"Every species we lose is a species that we don't know what opportunities we're losing... It could be a cancer-fighting drug, it could be the solution to hunger."
The report "relies on two major advances," said Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at RBG Kew. "Firstly, the recent release of the first geographically complete World Checklist of Vascular Plants—a landmark achievement after more than 35 years of meticulous and highly collaborative work. Secondly, the wealth of information on fungal diversity newly harnessed from the analyses of environmental DNA in soil samples across the world, integrated with other morphological and molecular evidence from fungarium specimens."
"In 11 chapters, we present compelling stories of what we can learn from these and related sources of data, and how these learnings can help us foster future research and conservation. This report is based on groundbreaking original research papers and reviews from many international teams of scientists," he added. Specifically, it draws on the expertise of 200 researchers at 102 institutions across 30 countries.
The checklist features 350,386 species of known vascular plants—but as many as 100,000 more have not yet been formally identified, and experts estimate that 3 in 4 undescribed vascular plants are likely already at risk. Given that, Kew scientists are calling for all newly described species to be treated as threatened unless proven otherwise.
"Ideally, partnerships between taxonomists and experienced conservation assessors would aim to describe and assess species simultaneously, to maximize opportunities for effective conservation action," said Matilda Brown, a researcher in conservation assessment and analysis at RBG Kew. "In the meantime, if accepted, our recommendation could aid in the protection of many tens of thousands of undescribed threatened species, by treating them as threatened as soon as they become known to us."
The fungi section of the report points out that "only 155,000 species have been formally named, while estimates of the total diversity have ranged from 250,000 in the 1800s to as many as 19 million species in recent decades." Now, scientists estimate that there are 2.5 million fungal species on the planet—meaning that over 90% remain unnamed.
However, the effort to identify species continues. Since just 2020, scientists have named more than 8,600 plant species and over 10,200 fungal species.
"Naming and describing a species is the vital first step in documenting life on Earth," said former Kew scientist Tuula Niskanen, now at the University of Helsinki in Finland. "Without knowing what species there are and having names for them, we won't be able to share information on the key aspects of species' diversity, make any assessments of species' conservation status to know whether they are at risk from extinction, or explore their potential to benefit people and society."
"It is essential to know what species of fungi we have here on Earth and what we need to do for them," she added, "so that we don't lose them."
Brown issued a similar warning about plant losses, telling the BBC that "when we consider that 9 out of 10 of our medicines come from our plants, what we are potentially staring down the barrel at is losing half of all of our future medicines."
"Every species we lose is a species that we don't know what opportunities we're losing," she added. "It could be a cancer-fighting drug, it could be the solution to hunger... And so to lose that, before we get a chance to study it would be a tragedy."
The new publication joins a series of alarming reports this year, from February NatureServe research that found 34% of plants species and 40% of animal species in the United States are at risk of extinction while 41% of U.S. ecosystems could collapse, to a September study that revealed dozens of genera—the next thickest branch from species on tree of life—have been lost since A.D. 1500 due to human activity.
The Kew report also comes after last December's Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework—a historic pact to safeguard and restore nature that followed years of negotiations but which some global advocates warned is nowhere near strong enough.
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