Intelligent ivy? Erudite eggplant? No, but a Canadian study has found compelling evidence that plants are capable of making decisions … slowly.
Researchers at the University of Alberta have found plants have the ability to integrate different types of information, an accomplishment previously seen only in the brains of animals.
J.C. Cahill, an ecology professor who published the results in the journal Science Thursday, traced the growth of roots in a pot and demonstrated how the plant was balancing risk and reward from two different environmental clues — making a choice, after a fashion.
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“We need thought to do this. Plants don’t need thoughts,” Cahill said.
Cahill and his team used a tiny camera in the bottom of the garden pot to watch a common agricultural weed, called velvetleaf, spread its roots through the soil.
When the plant had its own pot with nutrients distributed throughout the soil, it spread its roots widely.
When two plants were put in the same pot and nutrients were evenly distributed in the soil, the plants carefully avoided each other. Their roots basically grew straight down.
But when Cahill’s team put the nutrients in a patch between the two plants, each somehow decided the risks were worth the reward. Their roots grew into the patch of nutrients, but not beyond. It was the only time the roots started to intermingle.
The discovery is novel because it shows plants not just reacting to one stimulus, but taking two clues — the presence of nutrients and a competitor — and changing behaviour accordingly.
Of course, there’s a big difference between the way an animal brain works and the sorts of risk-reward calculations Cahill’s lab observed in plants. The plants may be making the plant equivalent of decisions — but they’re not thinking.
“There’s no brain, there’s no nervous system waiting to be discovered. Plants just don’t have that,” Cahill said. “Somehow, we think, the chemical interactions between the plants are driving this response, but we have no idea how that’s working.”
His next step is to try to prove that chemicals are involved. The team added activated charcoal to the soil to bind chemicals released by the roots, but the results are still being analyzed.
Cahill’s work is just the latest advance in the rapidly expanding field of behavioural ecology. Until 20 years ago, scientists generally assumed plant life was completely passive: rooted, taking whatever moisture, nutrients and sunlight chance brought their way.
The first major breakthrough came when scientists discovered that plants sense the colour of light and know if they are being shaded, said Susan Dudley, a biologist at McMaster University in Ontario, who also studies plant behaviour.
Dudley showed plants demonstrate kin recognition — and compete less for nutrients with plants that are closely related to them, than with strangers, even of the same species.
In another experiment, the tobacco plant was shown to call in parasitic wasps by releasing an airborne chemical when it was attacked by a caterpillar.
“They are very active,” Dudley said. “It’s really interesting how much of what they do is animal-like, or at least active. They are very, very good at sensing the environment and responding to it.”
Until now, all of the experiments involved one environmental clue and one reaction, Dudley said. Cahill’s experiment finally demonstrates a plant taking two clues and balancing them.
“What he’s showing is plants are making decisions,” he said.