Rec: What Plants Talk About

[neverspent]

I don't do a lot of recommendations here, but this is so relevant to my interests I wanted to mention it.

Nature: What Plants Talk About

It's a PBS program with a fascinating perspective on the way plants interact with their environment. The plant ecologist JC Cahill attributes agency to plants in a way we usually shy away from. It reminded me a little of the way Michael Pollan described the plant-human relationship in The Botany of Desire, but this just focuses on the plants.

When we think about plants, we don’t often associate a term like “behavior” with them, but experimental plant ecologist JC Cahill wants to change that. The University of Alberta professor maintains that plants do behave and lead anything but solitary and sedentary lives. What Plants Talk About teaches us all that plants are smarter and much more interactive than we thought!

The full program is streaming online if you're in the US or territories.

Comments

[shinsetsu]

Thanks for posting this.

[neverspent]

You're most welcome!

[travels_in_time]

I don't want to think that plants have any kind of specific reaction or interaction. Because all mine die. I'd hate to think that for whatever reason, I make plants suicidal. :(

[neverspent]

Awww. I'm sure you're not affecting your plants that way! I think "suicidal" would be taking this theory too far. Heh. But now I'm trying to remember if the program mentioned any situations when plant individuals in a community sacrificed themselves for the group, as a strategy.

And although the interaction of plants is more about chemicals being released to attract or repel certain things, or to relay information, I really am interested in how the physical presence of humans might affect plants. The old "talking to your houseplants" theory. I don't talk to my plants, and most of them do fine, but I have a peace lily -- a notoriously easy-to-care-for plant -- that will not thrive no matter what I do. I'm afraid it will die! Such a puzzlement.