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The Sensitive Plant
- viburnum 7y agoReally enjoyed this, thanks.
- chris_st 7y agoIf you liked this article, you might enjoy the book "Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?" by Frans de Waal [0]. He does a great job of describing all kinds of surprisingly intelligent animal behaviors, and some very clever tests to decide how and when they apply. Interestingly, about 30% or so of the book is kind of a rant against other animal behaviorists who have an "animals are stupid, and no amount of proof to the contrary will shake that belief" attitude. But that yields some pretty entertaining stories (and interesting experiments) as well :-) [0] https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393353664/ https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393...
- ecoled_ame 7y agobotany started in the late 18th century? tell that to ancient peruvians cultivating the potato or pretty much any ancient culture. i can’t stand so many scientific articles asserting that science began 300 years ago. it’s so short-sighted... sigh...
- empath75 7y agoModern science certainly began within the last few hundred years, of which botany is a discipline. Obviously people were studying the world prior to the invention of the scientific method, but that doesn’t mean they were doing science the way it’s understood today.
- doodlebugging 7y agoThis plant grows all over Texas. I can't count the times I've had the pleasure of introducing someone new to hiking or the outdoors how this plant responds to stimuli. I was thrilled when I found some growing on my land here in north Texas. Well written article. I really enjoyed this post.
- gumby 7y agoI used to spend hours playing with them in my great grandparents’ back yard. I had no idea they grew wild in North America!
- doodlebugging 7y ago[Distribution information - LBJ Wildflower Site](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=MIMI22 https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=MIMI22) I find it growing around my place in the rockiest parts of the yard. I also found seeds for sale on Amazon for less than $9. Crazy. Maybe I should cultivate a new income stream.
- James_Henry 7y agoSome of the potential consequences of plant cognition are really remarkable. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gustavo_Souza4/publication/336445583_Plants_are_intelligent_here%27s_how/links/5da1044a299bf116fe9ed2e2/Plants-are-intelligent-heres-how.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gustavo_Souza4/publicat... Also, the research and ideas into how plants could possibly have cognition is fascinating as well. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15592324.2019.1710661 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15592324.2019.17...
- carapace 7y agoIn his talk Michael Levin points out that all the cellular "machinery" that neurons use to think is present throughout all cells, it's just concentrated and accelerated in neurons. In other words, all life thinks. "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 Gregory Bateson (cybernetic anthropologist) postulated that "mind" was ambient in Nature, and that evolution and thought are two different aspects of the same phenomenon. Here we have science filling in the details and yes, "brains" (in the sense of smarts, not actual ganglia or organs) are indeed ambient in Nature. And, since self-regulating systems must have models of themselves to work efficiently, and since life is a self-regulating system across multiple fractally-intertwined subsystems that are themselves self-regulating, we should expect to find a "virtual world" of "beings" and other phenomenon. (Which, of course, we do. E.g. Nature spirits and plant Devas and others.)
- pstuart 7y agoA fascinating episode about plants and sound: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/smarty-plants https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/smart...