By: Daniel Galilea / EFE – Reports.
“Although we live surrounded by plants, the plant kingdom remains a mystery and, although plants do not have brains or move like us, cutting-edge science is revealing surprising discoveries about them,” explains Spanish scientist and researcher Paco Bald.
Professor of Philosophy of Science, director of the Minimum Intelligence Laboratory (MINT Lab) at the University of Murcia (southeast Spain), Calvo is an international expert in plant intelligence.
“For centuries we have studied the influence of plants on our environment, but we continue to reduce them to being a mere decorative element in our hectic lives,” says this specialist, author of the book ‘Planta sapiens’, along with the writer, illustrator and historian of science, Natalie Lawrence.
But science has revealed that “plants have a secret intelligence, thanks to which they can learn, remember, communicate, recognize their peers, evaluate risks and make decisions,” and even “they have something that we could well define as personality.” Calvo highlights.
This researcher has been studying plant intelligence for years, carrying out experimental studies “at the intersection of plant neurobiology and cognitive science”, carried out with the most advanced technologies and which invite us to think about nature in a radically different way.
“We are beginning to discover cases in which plants appear to have the ability to store information and use it to make predictions, learn, and even plan ahead, and perhaps that is true, but it is difficult to get to the bottom of such feats,” he explains. this researcher.
Lavatera: the ‘worshipper’ of the sun.
Calvo gives as an example of these discoveries “a humble little flower called “malva” or “panecillo”, “Lavatera cretica” for botanists”. It is a heliotropic plant that likes the alpine regions of the warm climates of southern Europe and northern Africa, but we also find it in the gardens of colder countries.
He explains that “there are many ‘heliotropic’ plants, which means they follow the movements of the sun throughout the day, like young sunflowers.”
The small “Lavatera”, throughout the day, rotates its leaves to follow the star, maximizing the amount of light they capture and, during the night, they turn in the direction of sunrise before it occurs, Calvo describes. .
“It is not that the leaves return to the same position they were in at the beginning of the previous day. The most amazing thing is that this plant can store information about where the sun will appear for several days, even in the complete absence of sunlight,” she emphasizes.
“’Lavatera’ plants confined in the dark in the laboratory can adequately predict the direction of dawn, diligently turning their leaves towards the absent sun each night,” he points out.
“This plant manages to do something that could be an indication of something similar to intelligence, being related to information processing like that carried out by nervous systems, and it does it without using anything that we can associate with a brain,” according to explains this researcher.
Mimosa: reacts to touch.
Calvo describes some experiments or home observations, which allow us to observe plant behavior and, from said observation, infer the intelligence of a plant in a sufficiently short time interval, focusing on its aerial part, since its roots, where they occur. very interesting phenomena, we cannot observe them without adequate laboratory equipment.
He points out that we can experiment with the “Mimosa púdica” plant, which folds its leaves upon contact (when touched), something that can be seen with the ‘naked eye’, without the need to film it, and then view the recording in fast motion (‘timelapse’). ‘), as happens with some scientific observations.
According to Calvo, we can subject the ‘Mimosa’ to a habituation process, which is the most basic form of learning.
This experiment consists of repeatedly presenting the plant with a stimulus, which in principle would trigger the leaf folding response, such as touching its leaves, after which, it can be observed how the plant stops folding, “that is, it gets used to it”, according to this scientist.
You can also put this plant in a glass bell along with cotton soaked in anesthetic (chloroform). After a while, the plant will go ‘sleep’.
When the anesthetic has had its effect, the “Mimosa” will stop folding upon contact, and it can later be seen how the plant ‘recovers’ its sensitivity when the effect of the anesthesia has worn off and folds again when touched, according to Calvo. .
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