The idea of the sensitivity and peculiar intelligence of plants is as old as the world. It is enough to recall the countless myths and legends about talking trees and flowers that reward a sensitive listener with magical gifts. In any culture of any country, such stories are found in abundance. As if once upon a time, Nature itself spoke to man, but gradually fell silent, suffocated by technogenic poison, and today only occasionally inadvertently betrays its conscious essence. Subsequently, the scientific community was imbued with this idea.
The Science of Ear Pulling
Back in 1848, the German experimental psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner suggested that conversation, attention, and affection could be beneficial for plant growth and health.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bengali physicist and biologist Jagadish Chandra Bose, studying the nature of changes in the potential of the cell membrane of plants under various circumstances, came to the conclusion that plants are able to react differently to stimuli, and therefore have a nervous system. He also found that seedlings grow faster with pleasant music and are oppressed by the impact of sharp noise, feel pain, understand attachment and "react to shock with a spasm in the same way as an animal's muscle." The famous Irish playwright and part-time vegetarian George Bernard Shaw, who once visited Boche's laboratory, was greatly shaken by the "convulsions" that cabbage experienced when it was boiled alive.
In the 1960s, Cleve Baxter took over the research baton. Baxter, who worked as a polygraph examiner for the CIA, was the first to seriously question the issue of sensory perception in plants. By connecting the dracaena to a lie detector, he recorded the plant's galvanic reactions when it was harmed or intended to be harmed. Time after time, the polygraph recorded almost human results, which left no doubt in Baxter: plants are able to feel pain and threat, that is, they have primary consciousness! But it was not possible to put a fat point in this issue. Numerous attempts to replicate Buxer's experiments have failed. The sensational results were deemed fake.
But the 60s could still surprise. The various mystical currents, stirred up by the wave of New Age, suspiciously quickly penetrated almost all spheres of life. Science is no exception. Esotericists said a new word in the search for the soul and consciousness of plants. Taking as a basis the theory of superweak radiation of living systems of the Soviet biologist Alexander Gurvich and armed with the experiments of the Soviet physiotherapist Semyon Kirlian, who discovered the glow of biological objects (as well as the residual glow of space in the place of displaced objects or their distant parts) in a high-frequency electric field, parapsychologists hastened to inform the world about the existence of aura in plants. That is, in fact, souls. But this turned out to be a profanation. In 1981, the "Kirlian aura" was recognized as a monument to scientific dishonesty for haste and unfounded conclusions. In fact, the glow was produced not by an ephemeral soul, but by completely material biochemical reactions.
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Old Facts In The New World
Modern science still knows nothing about whether plants have consciousness. So far, only the issue of pain has been reliably clarified. Plants are deprived of the brain, nervous system and nociceptor (nerve fibers for recognizing pain), which means they do not feel physiological pain.
Nevertheless, plants (as can be seen with the naked eye in the example of the bashful or venus flytrap mimosa) know exactly when the leaves are touched and folded. They not only understand the danger, but are also able to notify their neighbors about the attack of herbivorous insects or animals, as do acacias, in case of danger, as if on command, they emit poisonous tannin. Researchers at the University of Tübingen in Germany have proven that plants can see. They found a receptor on the tips of corn shoots, similar to the visual protein rhodopsin in the retina of the human eye, that makes plants turn to follow the light source. In addition, their cells contain receptors for the length of daylight hours and the intensity of ultraviolet radiation, which help to choose the optimal flowering time.
How to understand all this? The easiest way is to stand in a proud pose of the crown of creation and proclaim all life on Earth as soulless unreasonable bio-waste, food for the all-powerful Man. Or go to the other extreme and follow the primitive path of animating, "humanizing" everything and everyone. To attribute to our green neighbors on the planet the human psyche and human models of behavior. But this path is deliberately stalemate. Man is a product of evolution, society and culture, respectively, all his behavior patterns are conditioned by instincts, reflexes and moral principles. But even people are not the same. A simple example: a peaceful “okay” gesture, which in most countries means that everything is fine, Mexicans, Brazilians or Turks consider it a dirty insult. On what grounds then are we trying to impose our own worldview on living beings,not having a society in our usual understanding and having gone through a completely different evolutionary path? Another obstacle in the quest for a mind outside the human body is unreliable terminology. Scientists still do not have universal criteria for assessing reason and understanding, as there is no clear idea of the container of consciousness.
Plant Cybernetics
Researchers who have long developed immunity to miracles have come to the curious conclusion that the nervous system of animals is an effective, but far from the only way of processing information. Plants use some other mechanism, which remains a mystery.
Stefano Mancuso, director of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology in Florence, believes that consciousness and functioning in plants are not separated, as in higher animals, but are present in every cell. In this regard, he compares plants with artificial intelligence, which, figuratively speaking, is both a psyche and a physical body at the same time. An indirect proof of this can be considered the "modular" structure of the plant body, in which all functions important for survival are not concentrated in special organs, but are distributed throughout the body. Think about vegetative propagation. If, for example, a finger is cut off to a person and placed in a favorable nutrient medium, a new person will not develop from the finger. Even reptiles and amphibians capable of regeneration can only restore a lost body part,but there is no way to grow a new organism from the lost flesh. Plants can. “This critical strategic choice,” writes Mancuso, “allows plants to lose even significant body parts without risking their lives. Therefore, plants do not have lungs, liver, stomach, pancreas, or kidneys. But they can perform all the functions that these organs perform in animals. So why should the lack of a brain prevent them from being intelligent?"
Fairy Tale Leaked Into Reality
And now that the voice of reason has slightly lulled the belief in miracles, here's some food for thought. In Buddhist cosmogony, there are many worlds inhabited by amazing creatures that do not allow the sources of the foundation of the universe to dry out. One of the worlds, called the Sky of Growth, is inhabited by the little gods of Kumbanda - the patrons of the flora. Kumbandas are exactly like fairies from European legends: their graceful fragile bodies are pale green in color, and flowers grow in their hair.
An ancient Thai legend says that in time immemorial, the great god Indra, the lord of the firmament and heavenly fire, created a protected forest to reliably shelter the prince and his wife in it. For their marriage to be strong and their days full of joy, merciful Indra planted sixteen magical Women Trees ("Nari Pon") in the forest, which became the gates to the palaces of the Kumbands. Perfect creatures grew on those trees - fairies of unprecedented beauty. Exactly four days the flower of Nari Pon grew, after which charming girls came off the branches, who began to sing, dance and entertain the inhabitants of the forest with conversation. But the age of magic in a mortal body is short-lived: after only seven days, the fairies began to fade and dry up, becoming the size of a palm. A beautiful fairy tale, isn't it? Only this is not a fairy tale.
The Phra Ajat Dton Temple in Chiang Mai, located in Singburi province in central Thailand, houses two miniature mummies of fantastic creatures revered by the locals as a shrine. They are no larger than the palm of an adult, and their heads are crowned with strange attire, similar to dried flower cups.
American scientists conducted a study of mummies and found out that these are not human embryos, not dolls, and even more so not fruits grown in a special tightening case, like the famous square watermelons. X-ray scans showed inside their bodies a fully formed skeleton (more elongated, but clearly human), internal organs, teeth, tongue, eyes, ears, and five fingers and toes. At the same time, the tissues of the mummies are of plant origin, and the "headdress" is inseparable from the head and is nothing more than a peduncle. Nothing more is known about them.
What or who are they - a clever fake or living proof of the existence of intelligent plants? While this question hangs in the air without an answer.