5 ms·

Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant (2021)

98 points by quakeguy 4y ago

jalk 4y ago
That is pretty fascinating. Some amount of selective breeding and we have gained level 0 Eldar tech.
danwills 4y ago
I found this fascinating! I have no ability to vet the paper for science I'm afraid, but on an intuitive level, and especially given all the different biological sensing and animal-cleverness results that have been reported in recent years, I would not be at all surprised if the 'vision' hypothesis holds in the end. Cuttlefish (maybe even perhaps their skin independently of the brain?) can do this type of pattern-sensing and response, so why not plants? To be able to do this kind of thing only requires slightly a bigger (and perhaps differently-shaped) buffer for information ultimately, right?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Plants, by not being in a hurry, can disperse their information processing machinery in a way that makes it both resistant to damage and, anatomically, indefinitely hard to identify. They also can get by, for the same reason, with radically less of it, because the same machinery can worry at all stages of the problem, serially, one after another, not all at once as animals must. Finally, because slow processing demands such a small fraction of their energy budget, they can afford to support a great deal more of it than animals can. Plants can afford to be very, very intelligent. If we have not found examples of it, we might just not be looking correctly. What a plant could usefully do with intelligence might be decidedly non-obvious to such as ourselves, but it would be idiotic to conclude no such use is likely. (Octopus, incidentally, are able to mimic colors their eyes are believed not equipped to perceive.)
nycdatasci 4y ago
From Wikipedia: “In a 2022 paper, it was suggested that the plant has some sort of vision using ocelli. This hypothesis was presented on the basis of experiments in which the vine appeared to mimic plastic vines and artificial plants. However, the only control used was the lower leaves on the same plants, with an opaque shelf over them which could have influenced light exposure. The lack of control plants climbing anything apart from the same model of artificial host plant makes it plausible that the observed differences were due to age and light exposure.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquila https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquila
- gpvos 4y ago
  That seems like a simple hypothesis to test: just do the same setup with the shelves but without the plastic plant. Additional idea: also test with artificial leaves with the same form as a plain Boquila.
- vmception 4y ago
  Seems like it would be nice if there was peer review on an experiment's setup before papers were released. The current process is wasting everyone's time.
  - webmaven 4y ago
    Study preregistration accomplishes some of this, though the main aim is to preclude p-hacking and similar motivated data exploration.
glenstein 4y ago
When it comes to other animals, theres a lot of principled caution about attributing supposedly "human" concepts to apes or orca whales. When it comes to computers, we tend to be exceedingly cautious. For some reason that principled caution goes out the window once we start talking about plants. Here on HN I've seen folks equate photoreceptivity to consciousness, chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication", and indulge in open ended musing about the gaia hypothesis. Practically everything is game and there's no telling how seroius people are being or if they're just getting lost in their own metaphors.
- _Microft 4y ago
  I don’t think that there is a contradiction since I would not expect the ones who are careful with these ideas on animals and the ones suggesting them for plants to be the same people. Different people, different ideas.
  - glenstein 4y ago
    Right, but I was talking about the community level rather than the individual level.
- andai 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_communication See also: bacteria and fungi
  - glenstein 4y ago
    I'm aware of this wiki article.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  "equate photoreceptivity to consciousness" - is this any more than one or two nutters? "chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication"" - without context it may have been a perfectly reasonable supposition. "open ended musing about the gaia hypothesis" - hard to tell if it's a few or endemic without examples
aaron695 4y ago
praptak 4y ago
Why would the vine mimic the leaves of the host plant? Is it tasty enough for animals to seek out the specific leaves or what?
- bastawhiz 4y ago
  I'm no biologist, but if I had to guess, I'd guess the opposite: it wants to look like tastier plants so that animals eat it and spread its seeds.
  - culi 4y ago
    I know this isn't what you're saying but "seeds are stored in the leaves" sounds like the botanist equivalent of "pee is stored in the balls" haha But actually the hypotheses I've seen align more with the original poster's ideas. Plants don't want their leaves eaten. That's why they produce so many secondary chemicals to make leaves taste bitter or hard to digest. Most plants don't even want their fruit eaten actually. A plant has to spend a lot of "evolution points" (to borrow a phrase from TierZoo) to adapt to being able to survive the digestive process of whichever seed disperser it wants to attract.
- culi 4y ago
  Given that the fruit is actually enjoyed raw by native people there I'd guess that, yes, that's probably exactly it. Ideally, a plant adapted to having an edible fruit, can remain inconspicuous as much as possible to avoid it's leaves being munched on and then produce a bright red berry when it's ready to attract the attention of whoever they want to eat their fruit
foooobaba 4y ago
I’ve been trying to find a place to buy this plant (Texas, USA) for 3 years. Every place online I have found is always out of stock. Right now is actually the season to plant it, so I’ve been looking for it again. Has anyone found a place to buy it that is not out of stock and ships to the US?
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  It's definitely in stock. It just looks like a rubber plant or a swiss cheese plant or a...
- termios 4y ago
  why do you want to potentially introduce a plant from the chilean rainforest into texas? there are plenty of interesting plants here already.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Maybe because it is unique, to our knowledge? Nobody expects it to survive and propagate outdoors.
  - foooobaba 4y ago
    I don’t want to do that, but I do want to grow it in a climate controlled growth chamber and study it. It’s a fascinating plant.
    - termios 4y ago
      oh gotcha, apologies for jumping to conclusions.
- culi 4y ago
  Given its native range,[0] I highly doubt you'd be able to recreate it's native environment very well. Year-round rain, very hummus-rich soil, yet up to 2 weeks of snow per year. It's also dioecious so you'll need both male and female flowers for it to reproduce. Not to mention that it's a parasitic plant and likely has very specific relationships with its most common hosts. Also many plants from areas like this have very specific mycorrhizal associations so on top of that you might also require the right soil ecosystem. It's quite likely that it relies on some specific fungal species that's endemic to that area too given the uniqueness of the environment Are you experienced with growing plants this difficult? I'm big into plants and spend a lot of time reading about plants like these and it always saddens me to read about cool plants and then see that they're endangered because of wild harvesting to sell on the market. I always wonder who the hell is buying this. B. trifoliolata has not yet been evaluated for whether or not its endangered and it's unlikely it will any time soon since parasitic plants are notoriously hard to diagnose. Please don't go out searching for this unless you're absolutely sure you have the equipment and knowledge necessary to actually propagate this plant. A quick search on the Tropical Fruit Forum[1] shows that no one else has really had much success in cultivating this [0] https://www.gbif.org/species/7306115 https://www.gbif.org/species/7306115 [1] https://tropicalfruitforum.com/ https://tropicalfruitforum.com/
culi 4y ago
There are a few other plants that do similar mimicry of specific plants, but what's remarkable about B. trifoliolata is that it mimics such a large variety of plant leaves. Even leaves of some plants not found in it's native habitat! Even more remarkable is the fact that it does not require physical contact with a plant to mimic the leaves! As far as we know, this is totally unique
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Poison ivy is reputed to engage in such mimicry. It is usually cited as yet another example of Rhus's perfidy.

98 points by quakeguy 4y ago

jalk 4y ago

That is pretty fascinating. Some amount of selective breeding and we have gained level 0 Eldar tech.

I found this fascinating! I have no ability to vet the paper for science I'm afraid, but on an intuitive level, and especially given all the different biological sensing and animal-cleverness results that have been reported in recent years, I would not be at all surprised if the 'vision' hypothesis holds in the end. Cuttlefish (maybe even perhaps their skin independently of the brain?) can do this type of pattern-sensing and response, so why not plants? To be able to do this kind of thing only requires slightly a bigger (and perhaps differently-shaped) buffer for information ultimately, right?

ncmncm 4y ago
Plants, by not being in a hurry, can disperse their information processing machinery in a way that makes it both resistant to damage and, anatomically, indefinitely hard to identify. They also can get by, for the same reason, with radically less of it, because the same machinery can worry at all stages of the problem, serially, one after another, not all at once as animals must. Finally, because slow processing demands such a small fraction of their energy budget, they can afford to support a great deal more of it than animals can. Plants can afford to be very, very intelligent. If we have not found examples of it, we might just not be looking correctly. What a plant could usefully do with intelligence might be decidedly non-obvious to such as ourselves, but it would be idiotic to conclude no such use is likely. (Octopus, incidentally, are able to mimic colors their eyes are believed not equipped to perceive.)

nycdatasci 4y ago

From Wikipedia: “In a 2022 paper, it was suggested that the plant has some sort of vision using ocelli. This hypothesis was presented on the basis of experiments in which the vine appeared to mimic plastic vines and artificial plants. However, the only control used was the lower leaves on the same plants, with an opaque shelf over them which could have influenced light exposure. The lack of control plants climbing anything apart from the same model of artificial host plant makes it plausible that the observed differences were due to age and light exposure.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquila https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquila

gpvos 4y ago
That seems like a simple hypothesis to test: just do the same setup with the shelves but without the plastic plant. Additional idea: also test with artificial leaves with the same form as a plain Boquila.
vmception 4y ago
Seems like it would be nice if there was peer review on an experiment's setup before papers were released. The current process is wasting everyone's time.
- webmaven 4y ago
  Study preregistration accomplishes some of this, though the main aim is to preclude p-hacking and similar motivated data exploration.

glenstein 4y ago

When it comes to other animals, theres a lot of principled caution about attributing supposedly "human" concepts to apes or orca whales. When it comes to computers, we tend to be exceedingly cautious. For some reason that principled caution goes out the window once we start talking about plants. Here on HN I've seen folks equate photoreceptivity to consciousness, chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication", and indulge in open ended musing about the gaia hypothesis. Practically everything is game and there's no telling how seroius people are being or if they're just getting lost in their own metaphors.

_Microft 4y ago
I don’t think that there is a contradiction since I would not expect the ones who are careful with these ideas on animals and the ones suggesting them for plants to be the same people. Different people, different ideas.
- glenstein 4y ago
  Right, but I was talking about the community level rather than the individual level.
andai 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_communication See also: bacteria and fungi
- glenstein 4y ago
  I'm aware of this wiki article.
zasdffaa 4y ago
"equate photoreceptivity to consciousness" - is this any more than one or two nutters? "chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication"" - without context it may have been a perfectly reasonable supposition. "open ended musing about the gaia hypothesis" - hard to tell if it's a few or endemic without examples

aaron695 4y ago

praptak 4y ago

Why would the vine mimic the leaves of the host plant? Is it tasty enough for animals to seek out the specific leaves or what?

bastawhiz 4y ago
I'm no biologist, but if I had to guess, I'd guess the opposite: it wants to look like tastier plants so that animals eat it and spread its seeds.
- culi 4y ago
  I know this isn't what you're saying but "seeds are stored in the leaves" sounds like the botanist equivalent of "pee is stored in the balls" haha But actually the hypotheses I've seen align more with the original poster's ideas. Plants don't want their leaves eaten. That's why they produce so many secondary chemicals to make leaves taste bitter or hard to digest. Most plants don't even want their fruit eaten actually. A plant has to spend a lot of "evolution points" (to borrow a phrase from TierZoo) to adapt to being able to survive the digestive process of whichever seed disperser it wants to attract.
culi 4y ago
Given that the fruit is actually enjoyed raw by native people there I'd guess that, yes, that's probably exactly it. Ideally, a plant adapted to having an edible fruit, can remain inconspicuous as much as possible to avoid it's leaves being munched on and then produce a bright red berry when it's ready to attract the attention of whoever they want to eat their fruit

foooobaba 4y ago

I’ve been trying to find a place to buy this plant (Texas, USA) for 3 years. Every place online I have found is always out of stock. Right now is actually the season to plant it, so I’ve been looking for it again. Has anyone found a place to buy it that is not out of stock and ships to the US?

zasdffaa 4y ago
It's definitely in stock. It just looks like a rubber plant or a swiss cheese plant or a...
termios 4y ago
why do you want to potentially introduce a plant from the chilean rainforest into texas? there are plenty of interesting plants here already.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Maybe because it is unique, to our knowledge? Nobody expects it to survive and propagate outdoors.
- foooobaba 4y ago
  I don’t want to do that, but I do want to grow it in a climate controlled growth chamber and study it. It’s a fascinating plant.
  - termios 4y ago
    oh gotcha, apologies for jumping to conclusions.
culi 4y ago
Given its native range,[0] I highly doubt you'd be able to recreate it's native environment very well. Year-round rain, very hummus-rich soil, yet up to 2 weeks of snow per year. It's also dioecious so you'll need both male and female flowers for it to reproduce. Not to mention that it's a parasitic plant and likely has very specific relationships with its most common hosts. Also many plants from areas like this have very specific mycorrhizal associations so on top of that you might also require the right soil ecosystem. It's quite likely that it relies on some specific fungal species that's endemic to that area too given the uniqueness of the environment Are you experienced with growing plants this difficult? I'm big into plants and spend a lot of time reading about plants like these and it always saddens me to read about cool plants and then see that they're endangered because of wild harvesting to sell on the market. I always wonder who the hell is buying this. B. trifoliolata has not yet been evaluated for whether or not its endangered and it's unlikely it will any time soon since parasitic plants are notoriously hard to diagnose. Please don't go out searching for this unless you're absolutely sure you have the equipment and knowledge necessary to actually propagate this plant. A quick search on the Tropical Fruit Forum[1] shows that no one else has really had much success in cultivating this [0] https://www.gbif.org/species/7306115 https://www.gbif.org/species/7306115 [1] https://tropicalfruitforum.com/ https://tropicalfruitforum.com/

culi 4y ago

There are a few other plants that do similar mimicry of specific plants, but what's remarkable about B. trifoliolata is that it mimics such a large variety of plant leaves. Even leaves of some plants not found in it's native habitat! Even more remarkable is the fact that it does not require physical contact with a plant to mimic the leaves! As far as we know, this is totally unique

ncmncm 4y ago
Poison ivy is reputed to engage in such mimicry. It is usually cited as yet another example of Rhus's perfidy.