Talking Plants

Plants don’t need to be like us to be smart A lot has been written in recent years about plants being smart. Believe it all and you’ll suffer nauseating guilt and regret every time you eat a carrot. You certainly wouldn’t hold a Cabinet meeting near a scribbly gum, or trumpet vine. At best, you might seek to commune with the green sentient beans in your vegetable garden.   It’s frenetic out there. Drawing on chemical stockpiles the envy of Breaking Bad ’s Walter White, plants can fend off hostile insect attacks by calling in squadrons of predatory wasps, at the same time warning their vegetable cohorts to prepare arms. Peas have been overheard conversing in clicks, reminiscent of the Khoisan in South Africa. I’m sure you know by now that under our very feet, kilometres of fungal threads connect forest trees into a real, rather than Middle, Earth version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fangorn forest, populated not by phlegmatic Ents but by collaborative beech and oak.  Plants (and f...