The Darwin Archipelago by Steve Jones

Author:Steve Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

The Thinking Plant

DEEP IN THE AMAZON JUNGLE, A CREATURE SNAKES INTO THE light. As it climbs cautiously through the branches it senses a brighter spot on a distant tree. After weighing up the risks of abandoning its present post it plunges back into the gloom of the forest floor and creeps across the ground until at last it reaches its target, scrambles upwards, and triumphs to bask high in the tropical sunshine. The vine—for such it is—shows every sign of foresight in its behaviour. The notion that a plant might act in what appears to be an intelligent way seems alien; less so, perhaps, than before time-lapse films speeded up the circling of shoots or the opening of flowers, but at least unexpected. Can such a simple creature really plan ahead?

Romantics have long been convinced that the vegetable kingdom has a mind of its own. Gardeners talk to their crops in the hope that they will flourish, while real enthusiasts for botanical intelligence believe that cacti grow fewer spines when exposed to soft music and put them out again when a cat draws near. The Japanese even enter into two-way conversations with their green friends. They have patented an electronic device through which a flower can chat with its owner (or, when thirsty, ask for water). In the 1920s the great Indian physicist Chandra Bose, a pioneer in the study of electromagnetic waves, worked on electrical activity in plants. His subjects generated a measurable current when damaged (an observation that led to genuine scientific advances)—but Bose was also certain that music and kind words could set off the response.

Dubious as such claims might be, the mental universe of plants is, if nothing else, useful fuel for metaphor. Shelley writes of a garden in which a mimosa droops in response to a rejected lover’s despair: “Whether the sensitive Plant, or that / Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat, / Ere its outward form had known decay, / Now felt this change, I cannot say.” The Latin name for Shelley’s sympathetic subject is Mimosa pudica, in reference to its bashful nature (the Chinese call it “shyness grass”). Whatever the plant’s mental state, it does respond to the outside world. Most of the time, a mimosa’s branched leaf stands proud; but a slight touch, or a gust of wind, causes it to droop. It can take hours to recover. At night, no doubt exhausted by the emotional turmoil of the day, the leaves close up and their owner goes to sleep.

Shelley’s lines are both a literary device and an accurate observation. They also say something about the relationship of mind and brain. If a mimosa can act in an apparently rational way without any hint of cerebral matter, what does the endless debate on that topic mean? Philosophers, like poets, should pay more attention to botany.

Charles Darwin had no real interest in such metaphysical ideas (although he did claim that plants sometimes recoiled in “disgust”). He was nevertheless curious about

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