At the house in Vermont where I’ve stayed the past few summers, there are two large maple trees behind the chair where I drink my morning coffee. They stand just a few feet apart from each other; from a distance, you’d mistake them for one giant tree with a single dense canopy. I’ve often wondered, what kind of relationship do these two trees have with each other? Their root systems must be entangled, and I have no doubt they “talk” with each other, but what kind of language do they have? If a limb on one tree is damaged, does its twin feel pain?
I’ve thought a lot more about how trees communicate after I read Zoe Schlanger’s book “The Light Eaters.” Schlanger is a science writer at The Atlantic who’s written a dazzling account of the new science of plant intelligence. It turns out plants do a lot of things that animals do. They hear sounds, have memories, make decisions, and ward off predators by activating their immune system. Even though plants don’t have brains, some scientists now wonder if it’s time to expand the definition of a nervous system to include plants.
Some plant species seem to defy the laws of nature. There’s a chameleon vine in Chile that mimics the leaves of the plants it wraps around – even taking on the shape, vein pattern and thickness of the leaves of the other species. Scientists have found dozens of other species that this vine has mimicked, with leaves of wildly different shapes and sizes, and they now wonder if the boquila vine actually “sees” these other plants.
You can listen to my interview with Schlanger in this week’s show “Plant Intelligence.” I hope you’ll find this world of plant intelligence as astonishing as I did.
– Steve
