{"id":7149,"date":"2013-12-24T15:43:25","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T20:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7149"},"modified":"2013-12-24T15:49:26","modified_gmt":"2013-12-24T20:49:26","slug":"happy-phytomorphosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/12\/24\/happy-phytomorphosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy phytomorphosis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"my-sweet-tree-by-robert-and-shana-parkeharrison\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Plant scientists are wondering if plants really communicate with each other (and with insects and other organisms) or if they just “eavesdrop” on each other’s “soliloquies.”<\/p>\n

At stake in the debate are the definitions of communication (e.g., is it necessarily intentional, and is intentionality necessarily\u00a0conscious<\/em>\u00a0intentionality?) and behavior (is it something that only animals do?).<\/p>\n

What seems certain is that plants can and sometimes do share information.\u00a0This article<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Quanta<\/em>\u00a0summarizes recent research.<\/p>\n

Some quotes:<\/p>\n

“It turns out almost every green plant that’s been studied releases its own cocktail of volatile chemicals, and many species register and respond to these plumes.”<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

“Just a few months ago, the plant signaling pioneer\u00a0Ted Farmer<\/a>\u00a0of the University of Lausanne discovered an almost entirely unrecognized way that plants transmit information — with electrical pulses and a system of voltage-based signaling that is eerily reminiscent of the animal nervous system. \u00a0‘It’s pretty spectacular what plants do,’ said Farmer. ‘The more I work on them, the more I’m amazed.'”<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

“Does this really happen among wild plants, or is it an unusual phenomenon induced by lab conditions?”<\/p>\n

(One might speculate that it’s those yucky lab conditions that trigger some compulsion among plants to cooperate in finding a way out, like prisoners who need each other’s help in digging out an escape route. Rhizomes seeking release from the stratified prison.)<\/p>\n

“[…] the science of plant talk is challenging long-held definitions of communication and behavior as the sole province of animals. Each discovery erodes what we thought we knew about what plants do and what they can do. To learn what else they’re capable of, we have to stop anthropomorphizing plants, said Baldwin, who is now at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and try instead to think like them, to phytomorphize ourselves<\/strong><\/em>. Imagining what it’s like to be a plant, he said, will be the way to understand how and why they communicate — and make their secret lives a mystery no longer.” \u00a0[emphasis added]<\/p>\n

Phytomorphosis, yes. Becoming-plant is the way to understand how a seed turns into a tree, a wood grows from a field and defends itself against threats. Maybe even how a planet might regenerate itself after a climatic shock.<\/p>\n

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\"HollyIvy_640px-400x285\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Somehow this seems a fitting thing to celebrate when people are gathering to sing songs like “The Holly and the Ivy<\/a>” (that version or the standard one).<\/p>\n

Happy Christmas and merry Yule to all who wish it. May the seed of empathic wisdom grow in all of us, crossing species boundaries as swiftly as it crosses boundaries between giver, gift, and recipient. And a happy new beginning for the coming year. (This blog will remain dormant over the next several days.)<\/p>\n

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\"555925_10151274686343302_1823041406_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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See also Karban, Yang, and Edwards, “Volatile communication between plants that affects herbivory: a meta-analysis<\/a>,”\u00a0Ecology Letters<\/em>\u00a017.1 (2014), 44-52.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Plant scientists are wondering if plants really communicate with each other (and with insects and other organisms) or if they just “eavesdrop” on each other’s “soliloquies.” At stake in the debate are the definitions of communication (e.g., is it necessarily intentional, and is intentionality necessarily\u00a0conscious\u00a0intentionality?) and behavior (is it something that only animals do?). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196,691847],"tags":[38519,17820,58941,58942,27498,58943],"class_list":["post-7149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","category-religion-spirituality","tag-christmas","tag-parkeharrison","tag-phytomorphosis","tag-plant-communication","tag-trees","tag-yule"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1Rj","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1294,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/18\/half-way-house\/","url_meta":{"origin":7149,"position":0},"title":"half-way house","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The further I have gotten into Vibrant Matter, the more I have been thinking of it as a kind of half-way house on the route to a process-relational ontology. (I'll admit I've read the whole book now, but I'm trying to defer my comments on the final chapter till next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12753,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/07\/20\/what-does-it-mean-to-plant-a-tree-or-a-trillion\/","url_meta":{"origin":7149,"position":1},"title":"What does it mean to plant a tree (or a trillion)?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 20, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Here, for instance, in Brazil's Parque Nacional da Chapada dos Veadeiros? Zach St. George's New York Times article \"Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?\" is an excellent overview of the reality of tree planting versus the ideal of it. Among the reality-checks: In the 24 national plans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/07\/image.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1095,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/06\/26\/when-bad-things-happen-karma-running-over-dogma\/","url_meta":{"origin":7149,"position":2},"title":"when bad things happen (karma running over dogma)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We live in a universe of hazard, a place where asteroids strike, where car smash-ups pluck out a life like a boot squashing a centipede, where planes fall out of the sky, a heart attack takes a brother from behind in the middle of a night, a train runs over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"500px-Hazard_E.svg.png","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/06\/500px-Hazard_E.svg_.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3675,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/04\/29\/stalking-the-cinema-stalking-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":7149,"position":3},"title":"Stalking the cinema stalking the world","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a version of something that comes late in Chapter One of my Ecologies of the Moving Image manuscript. This follows a description of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker (USSR, 1979), which I take as a kind of paradigmatic model for the process-relational framework the book develops. Here I discuss the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/04\/tarkovsky.stalker-275x207.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9620,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/04\/15\/anthroposcenic-chernobyl-in-text-image\/","url_meta":{"origin":7149,"position":4},"title":"Anthropo(s)cenic Chernobyl* in image & text","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"My Gund Institute research talk from a few months ago, on \"Navigating Earth's 'Zone of Alienation': Chernobyl and the Search for Adequate Images of the Anthropocene,\" can now be viewed online (see link below). It consists mostly of out-takes from my book Shadowing the Anthropocene, forthcoming later this year from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/0UT7jqMeAgA\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5820,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/05\/04\/nt-3-grusin-why-nonhuman-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":7149,"position":5},"title":"NT3: Grusin “Why nonhuman now?”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Day 2 at The Nonhuman Turn. Richard Grusin: Why Nonhuman? Why Now? The CFP for this conference elicited lively comments and concerns on Facebook walls (Ken Wark's and Alex Galloway's): expression of \"turn fatigue\" (:-) [ai: my first proposal was about just that], and a concern that this would ipso\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7149"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7158,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7149\/revisions\/7158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}