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DOUBLE STANDARD. "The food writer Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma (Penguin, 2006) among others, wrote an article in The New Yorker in 2013 exploring why terms such as intelligence, memory and even behaviour have been contentious for plant scientists. His thesis boils down to a divide in biology that allows zoologists to use anthropomorphic terms, but denies the privilege to plant scientists." https://lnkd.in/dxRVH6U View in LinkedIn

NEURONAL SWARMS. "Most neuroscientists would agree that, while brains considered as a whole function as centralized command centers for most animals, within the brain there doesn’t appear to be any command post; rather, one finds a leaderless network." https://lnkd.in/dvFaNgd View in LinkedIn

BESTING BEE MEMORY. "Mimosa, the “sensitive plant”, can learn which stimuli are worth curling its leaves against in defence and which are not – and retain this knowledge for 10 times longer than the memory span of bees." https://lnkd.in/drcPRwf View in LinkedIn

PLANT LEARNING AND MEMORY. "Researchers in Australia recently sought to investigate this hypothesis by attempting to “train” a group of touch-me-not plants (Mimosa pudica)." Drop experiments showed that they could learn, and recall that memory after a month.” https://lnkd.in/dGP73v2 View in LinkedIn

NO PLASTIC BACKDROP. “A growing body of research suggests that far from being merely a passive, green backdrop to the natural world, plants actively engage in complex behaviour. They are capable of communicating with allies, attacking rivals and even feeding their young.” https://lnkd.in/dGP73v2 View in LinkedIn

INCIDENTAL IMPRINT? "While the density of annual rings on a cross-cut of a branch may provide a dendrologist insight into long-term climatic development, it is highly improbable that this information is accessible to the tree itself. Such “stored information” may be a mere imprint of incidents and accidents of the past, without any informative value for those involved." https://lnkd.in/dfsCv77 View in LinkedIn

DATA ACCESS. "Plants store a wealth of data about their history in the structure of their bodies. Given the permanent character of cell walls, every branch and twig holds information about the past. However, this by no means guarantees that the plant cares—or that it is at least capable of accessing these data." https://lnkd.in/dfsCv77 View in LinkedIn

Afternoon tea just waiting for you. View in LinkedIn