Plants Talking

 Am a long-time amateur botanist, and heard of such things long ago, thought little of it, but the science is still evolving.    Here an excerpt of work underway:

Some aspects of plant behavior can be studied in the same terms as animal or human behavior

DENYSE O'LEARY APRIL 9, 2022  in Mindmatters

One genuine surprise in recent decades has been the discovery that plants have nervous systems like animals and use some of the same compounds in communications — for example, TMAO to relieve stress and glutamate to speed transmission.

Venus flytrap at work

Biologist Peter Rogers pointed out recently that the similarities may shed a bit of light on issues around anaesthesia. Surprisingly, it is possible to anesthetize a plant. The shameplant (Mimosa pudica) and the Venus flytrap demonstrated that:

Thirty years after anesthesia debuted in the operating room, Claude Bernard, a French physiologist, demonstrated that the shameplant (Mimosa pudica), which bashfully folds into itself when touched, was unresponsive to touch after exposure to ether, a commonly used anesthetic. The plant also folds into itself at night time, but this movement was not affected by anesthesia. Bernard concluded that anesthesia does not inhibit the ability to move; rather, it inhibits the plant’s ability to sense its environment. That is to say, anesthesia blocks consciousness…

PETER ROGERS, “HOW VENUS FLYTRAPS GIVE SCIENTISTS INSIGHTS ON CONSCIOUSNESS AND ANESTHESIA” AT BIG THINK (MARCH 27, 2022)  ...... '