Plants 'can think and remember'

If you have a plant under 24 hrs of light and stick one branch under something to block all light only the covered branch flowers, or visa-versa if you have a plant under 12 hrs light and stick a branch under 24 hrs light, the plant flowers but not the branch.
I guess this means that flowering is locally controlled on the plant and there is no single "mind" or controlling factor for the whole plant. Not surprising to me.

-SamS

VerdantGreen said:

this has a lot of implications for growers - interesting article

we could really do with a 'botany' section but until then this is probably the best place for it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10598926



EDIT 25/11 - here is a link to the actual paper that the bbc is reporting - many thanks to spurr
(html) http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/content/full/22/7/2201
(pdf) http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/reprint/22/7/2201.pdf

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What happens to plants that have half a plant in a too cold environment and half in a too hot environment do you think "they" will remember the too cold or too hot? I have my doubts...

With my plants from seeds I tell them daily that if they don't put out more resin I will pull them up out of the ground and kill them, and I kill thousands each season so for sure they are sensing what is happening to their neighbors, right????
Anyway all my plants know for sure that if they don't increase their resin, they are gonna die, and every year I will get more and more resin, right?
As you can see I do have my doubts, but who knows.
NOTE: No Plants Were Hurt Doing This Experiment, I was Joking...

But I do love to kill plants that are not up to my program, thats what breeders do, kill any that don't conform to the goal. Sometimes that is 99 out of 100 or more.
I have no idea if my plants understand or are capable of understanding anything I am doing, I doubt it.


I want a Cannabis plant that will grow in the cold, under short photoperiod and flower whenever I want it too.
-SamS

sac beh said:

Hi Verdant,

I thought you might be interested in this study, released a couple days ago. I realize this thread has turned to the discussion of what constitutes thinking and remembering and whether these can be attributed to plants. But regardless of that question, here we see the genetic basis for vernalization, which these researchers recognize as at least a simulation of memory.

Vernalization-Mediated Epigenetic Silencing by a Long Intronic Noncoding RNA
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/01/science.1197349

The PR:
Plants 'remember' winter to bloom in spring with help of special molecule

AUSTIN, Texas—The role a key molecule plays in a plant's ability to remember winter, and therefore bloom in the spring, has been identified by University of Texas at Austin scientists.

Many flowering plants bloom in bursts of color in spring after long periods of cold in the winter. The timing of blooming is critical to ensure pollination, and is important for crop production and for droves of people peeping at wildflowers.

One way for the plants to recognize the spring—and not just a warm spell during winter—is that they "remember" they've gone through a long enough period of cold.

"Plants can't literally remember, of course, because they don't have brains," says Sibum Sung, assistant professor in the Section of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology. "But they do have a cellular memory of winter, and our research provides details on how this process works."

The process is known as vernalization, whereby a plant becomes competent to flower after a period of cold. And though it is common for many plants adapted to temperate climates, including important crops like winter wheat, it has not been until the past decade or so that scientists have begun to understand the process's genetic and molecular underpinnings.

Sung and postdoctoral fellow Jae Bok Heo have now discovered that a long, non-coding RNA molecule, named COLDAIR, is required for plants to set up a memory of winter.

They published their work on the Arabidopsis plant in Science Express on Dec. 2.

This is how it works: In fall, a gene called FLC actively represses floral production. A random bloom in fall could be a waste of precious energy.

But after a plant has been exposed to 20 days of near-freezing temperatures, the scientists found that COLDAIR becomes active. It silences the FLC gene, a process that is completed after about 30 to 40 days of cold. With the FLC silenced as temperatures warm in the spring, other genes are activated that initiate blooming.

COLDAIR helps create a cellular memory for a plant, letting it know it has been through 30 or more days of cold.

But, how does the cold actually turn on COLDAIR?

"That is one of the next questions we have," says Sung. "How do plants literally sense the cold?"

Answering these kinds of basic questions could lead to crop improvements and will be important to grasp as climate changes alter the length of the winter season, with possible repercussions to vernalization in plants around the world.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-12/uota-pw120710.php

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hazemaker said:

Your not seriously going to use MYTHBUSTERS as your source are you? That show is terrible! They did a horrible job with the MOON LANDING HOAX! Skipped numerous factors and as i recollect they did the same thing with the plants! Offcourse they Think,Sense remember, We are all one, cmon people,NOT MY PEOPLE, havent you tripped on acid, shrroms, morning glories, dmt, 5meodmt, Salvia or for godsake a healthy dose of i dunno CANNABIS? Its all connected, the in is the out and the up is the down, there are no barriers, just perceptions of such..................

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Yeah. We're all one. I miss the religion forum.

But plants can't talk, and they don't have emotions.

They're US in another form... but they're the form of US that doesn't think or feel in a human sense. They can "feel" sunlight. They can "feel" damage... but they do not feel happy or sad or melancholy or ecstatic.

Please reply with facts if you wish to debate.

And yes, I've eaten a whole bunch of LSD.

Also, RE: Mythbusters... it's a TV show. They can't test every aspect of every myth and what they do edit in is designed as entertainment, not hard science. Even so, their experimental evidence did not leave me with any lingering hope that my plants are affectionate toward me.

And really, let's think about this. If your plants can read your thoughts... shouldn't all of them be really, really slow growing? I mean, they know you plan to keep them secluded from males, that they'll never ever be pollinated and will die virgins. Would you produce big sticky vaginas all over your body if you knew you'd never get a dick?

hi Sam, and thanks for visiting the new forum!

the example you give is one where the plant responds in a 'localised' manner to photoperiod.

but there are examples when the plant can 'process' different information coming from two areas and react in a holistic manner.
- one that springs to mind is the reaction of a plant to being crowded by it's neighbors - it senses that difference in spectral quality of light (red:far red ratio) between it's canopy leaves and it's stems (caused by competition/shading) and reacts by cell elongation/stretch in order to compete for more sunlight.

http://5e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=e&id=236

obviously the BBC's headline that plants can 'think and remember' is a bit ambitious, but i imagine it generated more interest that if they had used the title of the paper "Evidence for Light Wavelength-Specific Photoelectrophysiological Signaling and Memory of Excess Light Episodes in Arabidopsis"

i think that plant responses could be better compared to 'programming' - and rather excellent programming at that, but i did find it amazing that plants use electrophysiological signals in a similar way to many animal brains and nervous systems (as far as i understand it).

VG

Sam_Skunkman said:

If you have a plant under 24 hrs of light and stick one branch under something to block all light only the covered branch flowers, or visa-versa if you have a plant under 12 hrs light and stick a branch under 24 hrs light, the plant flowers but not the branch.
I guess this means that flowering is locally controlled on the plant and there is no single "mind" or controlling factor for the whole plant. Not surprising to me.

-SamS

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Anti said:

Would you produce big sticky vaginas all over your body if you knew you'd never get a dick?

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Yes, yes I would.

I first got put onto this concept by Thompkins' book The Secret Life of Plants (pdf here). Plant communication (also called primary perception or the Bose/Backster effect) implies some amount of plant intelligence (or at least memory/learning and binary logic) - here's a skeptically biased Wikipedia article on the subject, and a more enlightened/open minded set of experiments from Borderlands journal. For some background, check out this 12-part interview with Backster.

Of course, being a rationally-trained skeptic, when I encountered all this stuff, my initial reaction was "this is all 50 year-old pseudo science!". Then a friend sent me this 2010 TED Conference lecture on plant intelligence/plant neurobiology by a guy named Stefano Mancuso. Mancuso is the director of the International Laborartory of Plant Neurobiology which does a lot of VERY cool research (as highlighted in this 2007 Wired Magazine article/interview).

All this data has made me respect and come to agree with the ideas of plant consciousness, and I've had some preliminary conversations with an engineer friend about building devices to interact/communicate more directly with my garden. Just imagine teaching your favorite mothers to count out loud (skip ahead to 4:55)!

Or, skip the reading, get baked, and watch this (use the seemingly endless musical montages and interpretative dances to roll/grind/pack a few rounds worth of herbal ammunition, because you won't want to take your eyes off the screen once the narration starts rolling) :

Part 1/11

Part 2/11

Part 3/11

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Part 8/11

Part 9/11

Part 10/11

Part 11/11

Verdant,

Another one for you, although this one is highly theoretical, it is well-written and offers some compelling lines of investigation on this topic. I have to admit that I have a strong bias toward reading this material with a mind very open to the possibilities of thinking and remembering being attributed to plants, due to my previous research experience in animal intelligence and long being convinced by the evidence in that area. Its a long read, here are a couple important parts:

Aspects of Plant Intelligence
http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full

Abstract
Intelligence is not a term commonly used when plants are discussed. However, I believe that this is an omission based not on a true assessment of the ability of plants to compute complex aspects of their environment, but solely a reflection of a sessile lifestyle. This article, which is admittedly controversial, attempts to raise many issues that surround this area. To commence use of the term intelligence with regard to plant behaviour will lead to a better understanding of the complexity of plant signal transduction and the discrimination and sensitivity with which plants construct images of their environment, and raises critical questions concerning how plants compute responses at the whole‐plant level. Approaches to investigating learning and memory in plants will also be considered.

A Darwinian mechanism for phenotypic plasticity
In mammalian brains, phenotypic plasticity underpins the process of learning and memory. Except in early development, neural cell numbers do not increase, and changes in function are provided, as already described, by changes in either number of dendrite connections or synaptic adhesion that form the adaptive neural networks essential for intelligent behaviour. It is the ability to create new computational networks that either direct the flow of information into different channels or reference previously held memories that are crucial. Once new dendrites form or decay the neural cell becomes effectively a cell with different functions. In early development, new cells with new dendrites and thus connections arising from mitosis obviously contribute, although memory may perhaps be more easily retained in non‐dividing cells.

Because plants lack an obvious specific tissue for computation and because cell division/development continues throughout the life cycle, new mechanisms for computation may be required. What is suggested here is: (1) the basic elements of computation are individual cells in tissues; (2) that computational cellular networks are formed as the tissue develops, best fitted for the environmental state of the time; and (3) each individual plant (genet) accumulates tissues (ramets) with different computational capabilities, so reflecting the history of experience. Just as the process of learning in a brain could be represented as a time series, a set of snapshots of developing brain connections, in plants, each snapshot may possibly be represented by developing plasmodesmatal connections or equally, successive new tissues. So, instead of changing dendrite connections, plants form new networks by creating new tissues, a series of developing brains as it were, that can act like parallel processors each with slightly different computational capabilities. In this way, the successive plant tissues act as repositories of memory of environmental states which, if such information can be conveyed elsewhere, contribute to the whole plant assessment.

Edit - lot of hearsay and non science in this thread.

Sam Skunkman - one leaf can turn a whole plants photoperiodic response on. Try one leaf in 12/12 it'll screw with the whole plant. This from plant biology lectures and the textbook Raven, Plant Biology.

Yet to see anything that can't be put down to genetic response. Still keen to see it.

IncredibowlBoss said:

...Of course, being a rationally-trained skeptic, when I encountered all this stuff, my initial reaction was "this is all 50 year-old pseudo science!"...

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I agree that "The Secret Life of Plants" is comprised of mostly bunk science. I wholly agree with you that it has much more pseudo-science than real science. I have the book, and "Secrets of the Soil" too. "The Secret Life of Plants" is fun to read as fictional novel IMO. YMMV.

spurr said:

I agree that "The Secret Life of Plants" is comprised of mostly bunk science. I wholly agree with you that it has much more pseudo-science than real science. I have the book, and "Secrets of the Soil" too. "The Secret Life of Plants" is fun to read as fictional novel IMO. YMMV.

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Definitely agree that the Secret Life of Plants lacks anything that would pass modern scientific muster. Curious to get your opinion on the Stefano Mancuso material linked above, though...

I will check it out today (I hope) and get back to you.

MrFista,

I understand you. But leaving an as of yet insufficiently answered question open while certain lacuna in the research are filled, this isn't pseudoscience. The leap from human to animal intelligence was made possible by the realization that there is no biological basis that certain attributes such as memory and consciousness must be constrained to strictly human processes. This realization, which finds no enemies in evolutionary biology, avoids the popular criticism that this research anthropomorphises non-human organisms and processes. Analogies between species can be found such that the same effective result is produced by differing processes, and when these are found it seems like a scientific duty to further explore their mechanisms and ask the challenging questions.

None of this is to say that wild speculation and books such as this "Secret Life.." should be accepted in a scientific context. But level-headed research which attempts to bridge the gap while adhering to the most important scientific methods should, regardless of whether or not the data and conclusions require a re-definition of the words we use to describe the attributes being studied in a biological context.

No problem sac beh. My position is that we (humans) are not nearly as smart as we think we are. I see science bringing a lot of our 'intelligence' down a peg, finding the genetic underlying mechanisms of much of our behaviour, the emergent property of consciousness a scanning mechanism contrasting current sensory input with previously imprinted synaptic 'memories' to recognise 'new' things, and to 'learn'.

What struck me most while learning about neuronal circuitry was how much these pathways resembled circuit chips. I got a much better understanding of electronics learning about nervous systems than I did intelligence.

So much of us is kneejerk genetic response. The recent findings of Lactobacillus plantarum influencing mating selection in Drosophila piqued my interest. The bacteria affect pheremone levels on the flies cuticle and selected mates according to substrate the flies were adapted to feeding on. Take this into account with human trials of women who prefer the scent of clothes with the scent of men who had the most variation in antibodies compared to them...

Many things are afoot, unseen chemicals in the air telling you what to do... Are the voices in my head bacteria?

Plant intelligence... I'm still not convinced of human intelligence.

warning - the following post is philosophical - i blame the Lemon Thai

i guess intelligence is a word made by humans, as are all words that we know. perhaps the plants have their own word for it
plants and animals have the same underlying 'drive' - to go forth and multiply, genetics and natural selection means that both have got very good at it.

evolution is the infinite monkeys on typewriters, life is the complete works of Shakespeare. i guess natural selection would be the editor.

Sam_Skunkman said:

I want a Cannabis plant that will grow in the cold, under short photoperiod and flower whenever I want it too.
-SamS

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I need that one asap !!

great thread VG, really good read and a lot to ponder.

Agreed, it's a great thread.

I am being facetious. We de need to be wary of the pseudo science it's nice to see others recognise it as such.

When looking at the plant 'memory' article, where storage of molecules directs later behaviour, well, I have to be honest, this is a lot like human memories to my limited understanding.

Memory is defined as the ability to store, retain, and recall information. Sensory input -> chemical gradient - > sensory output involving previously stored information (and a new cue?).

For all we know plants are well ahead of what we percieve now.

Internet (fungi) eg: Trees sharing carbs between tree species via fungal networks - communication?

Wireless network (gaseous chemicals) eg: legumes signalling rhizobia. Brassicas signalling Encarsia.

Deep over here. . . Glad I saved this read for a moment such as this .. .. (Sour D)

I hold my girls and speak to them.. hell I talk to my car.. my chillum and I have a Conversation sometimes.. I bet they all understand me the same... Blah blah blah BLAH... bad breath.. Blah Blah blah.. Co2.. Blah blah blah.. who knows what Crazy Vibes we are emitting ... If anything plants would just "RESPOND" to change not Think and CHOOSE... my uumm 2 cents..

MrFista,
Have you done this with Cannabis? I have dozens of times with many different varieties and I can assure this is not true for Cannabis. In the case as below all that happens is the branch under 12/12 flowers, the rest of the plant stays vegetative. Try it. I have never had a whole plant flower or even begin to flower because I stuck one branch under 12/12. Or in reverse if you are flowering a plant and just a branch is under long vegetative hours, the plant flowers and the branch stays vegetative. I have seen this hundreds of times, in greenhouses with darkening systems, and a branch sticking out of the darkening system is all that does not flower. Even more I have had plants near by lights (30 feet away from a 600 W sodium) that on a single branch the side facing the light was vegetative while the side of the branch facing away from the light was flowering. The whole plant was like this half flowered and half not, depending if it got any of the 24 hour light from the sodium light. The branches that got the most light were zero flowered the branches on the other side that got no sodium light were 100% flowering. The flowering plant was receiving light from the sun that was less then 12 hours a day.
-SamS

MrFista said:

Edit - lot of hearsay and non science in this thread.

Sam Skunkman - one leaf can turn a whole plants photoperiodic response on. Try one leaf in 12/12 it'll screw with the whole plant. This from plant biology lectures and the textbook Raven, Plant Biology.

Yet to see anything that can't be put down to genetic response. Still keen to see it.

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Sam_Skunkman said:

Or in reverse if you are flowering a plant and just a branch is under long vegetative hours, the plant flowers and the branch stays vegetative. I have seen this hundreds of times, in greenhouses with darkening systems, and a branch sticking out of the darkening system is all that does not flower. Even more I have had plants near by lights (30 feet away from a 600 W sodium) that on a single branch the side facing the light was vegetative while the side of the branch facing away from the light was flowering. The whole plant was like this half flowered and half not, depending if it got any of the 24 hour light from the sodium light. The branches that got the most light were zero flowered the branches on the other side that got no sodium light were 100% flowering. The flowering plant was receiving light from the sun that was less then 12 hours a day.
-SamS

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I thought this was common knowledge with cannabis. I used to sneak into the room during the "night" and the few branches where the light hit the girls had herm flowers and took forever to mature. The rest was perfect.

FWIW,

I found this entry about plant misconceptions to be on topic, from the thread I started (here), the second article:

Obsolete concepts

A dictionary definition of intelligence can be applied to plants, even though they lack nervous systems, because of their adaptively variable behavior. (cite 9-11)

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Cites:


9. Plants are indeed intelligent
Hershey, D. R.
Plant Science Bulletin 51: 75–77. (2005)
(full text) http://botany.org/PlantScienceBulletin/PSB-2005-51-3.php#Plants


10. Aspects of plant intelligence.
Trewavas, A.
Annals of Botany 92: 1–20 (2003)
(full text) http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/1/1.full


11. The First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology,
17–20, May 2005, Florence, Italy
http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/abstracts.php




Note:
sac beh already posted study from cite number 10 above.