[Paleopsych] CSM: New research opens a window on the minds of plants

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New research opens a window on the minds of plants
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p01s03-usgn.htm
5.3.5

      By Patrik Jonsson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

       RALEIGH, N.C. - Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale
     parasitic plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food,
              and make adroit decisions on how to approach them.

     Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find
      its way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain"
          that communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off.

       The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the
    future, based on computations of weather patterns. And many who visit
     the redwoods of the Northwest come away awed by the trees' survival
        for millenniums - a journey that, for some trees, precedes the
                                  Parthenon.

      As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of new findings, even
       those skeptical of the evolving paradigm of "plant intelligence"
     acknowledge that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern, flora have
    the smarts of the forest. Some scientists say they carefully consider
      their environment, speculate on the future, conquer territory and
    enemies, and are often capable of forethought - revelations that could
               affect everyone from gardeners to philosophers.

       Indeed, extraordinary new findings on how plants investigate and
    respond to their environments are part of a sprouting debate over the
                        nature of intelligence itself.

    "The attitude of people is changing quite substantially," says Anthony
                              Trewavas, a plant

    biochemist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a prominent
    scholar of plant intelligence. "The idea of intelligence is going from
      the very narrow view that it's just human to something that's much
                        more generally found in life."

      To be sure, there are no signs of Socratic logic or Shakespearean
        thought, and the subject of plant "brains" has sparked heated
    exchanges at botany conferences. Plants, skeptics scoff, surely don't
       fall in love, bake soufflés, or ponder poetry. And can a simple
      reaction to one's environment truly qualify as active, intentional
                                  reasoning?

     But the late Nobel Prize-winning plant geneticist Barbara McClintock
    called plant cells "thoughtful." Darwin wrote about root-tip "brains."
     Not only can plants communicate with each other and with insects by
    coded gas exhalations, scientists say now, they can perform Euclidean
    geometry calculations through cellular computations and, like a peeved
             boss, remember the tiniest transgression for months.

    To a growing number of biologists, the fact that plants are now known
     to challenge and exert power over other species is proof of a basic
                                  intellect.

    "If intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, then,
        absolutely, plants are intelligent," agrees Leslie Sieburth, a
            biologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

      For philosophers, one of the key findings is that two cuttings, or
      clones, taken from the same "mother plant" behave differently even
                    when planted in identical conditions.

     "We now know there's an ability of self-recognition in plants, which
     is highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it's actually there,"
    says Dr. Trewavas. "But why has no one come to grips with it? Because
     the prevailing view of a plant, even among plant biologists, is that
       it's a simple organism that grows reproducibly in a flower pot."

        But here at the labs on the North Carolina State campus, where
      fluorescent grow-rooms hold genetic secrets and laser microscopes
      parse the inner workings of live plants, there is still skepticism
      about the ability of ordinary houseplants to intellectualize their
                                 environment.

     Most plant biologists are still looking at the mysteries of "signal
       transduction," or how genetic, chemical, and hormonal orders are
      dispersed for complex plant behavior. But skeptics say it's less a
    product of intelligence than mechanical directives, more genetic than
    genius. Some see the attribution of intelligence to plants as relative
              - an oversimplification of a complex human trait.

       And despite intensifying research, exactly how a plant's complex
    orders are formulated and carried out remains draped in leafy mystery.

    "There is still much that we do not know about how plants work, but a
    big part of intelligence is self-consciousness, and plants do not have
     that," says Heike Winter Sederoff, a plant biologist at N.C. State.

          Still, a new NASA grant awarded to the university to study
    gravitational effects on crop plants came in part due to new findings
    that plants have neurotransmitters very similar to humans' - capable,
       perhaps, of offering clues on how gravity affects more sentient
       beings. The National Science Foundation has awarded a $5 million
      research grant to pinpoint the molecular clockwork by which plants
                    know when to grow and when to flower.

     The new field of plant neurobiology holds its first conference - The
      First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology - in May in Florence, Italy.

     The debate is rapidly moving past the theoretical. In space, "smart
      plants" can provide not only food, oxygen, and clean air, but also
     valuable companionship for lonely space travelers, say some - a boon
     for astronauts if America is to go to Mars. Research on the workings
    of the mustard weed's statolith, for example, may one day yield a corn
              crop with 1-3/8 the gravitational force of Earth.

         Some Earth-bound farmers, meanwhile, see the possibility of
    communicating with plants to time waterings for ultimate growth. A new
    gene, Bypass-1, found by University of Utah researchers, may make that
                                  possible.

     Still, it can be hard for the common houseplant to command respect -
                 even among those who study it most closely.

      "When I was a postdoc, I had a neighbor who watched me buy plants,
      forget to water them, and throw them out, buy them and throw them
    out," says Dr. Sieburth. "When she found out I had a PhD in botany, I
                        thought she was going to die."