Plants are living creatures that are considered silent, plants are also often considered living beings that are static and stagnant. Even in ancient times, the plants themselves were considered half-lives and half dead matter.
From the book of the century of the Renaissance, there is an order of living things that make plants described as the lowest creature because it can not sense, positioned on a stone in a lifeless stone and under animate and capable animals. Even Aristotle in his work entitled "De Anima" positions plants as low-level creatures. Aristotle writes that "plants are at the border between life and not living, they have only a low-level soul of the vegetative soul". Surely with the development of science in today's era, there are many proofs that plants can sense, even much more sophisticated than animal sensation, or at least some species of animals in large numbers, especially humans.
The fact is that at least at each end of the root roots, it is able to detect and monitor 15 different chemical compounds directly and continuously as well as detect physical parameters. And many facts from plant observer experts, that plants themselves have complex behaviors, and no other words are more appropriate to describe this behavior by experts other than "intelligence". The ignorance of facts about the uniqueness and the advantages of plants has become a mass fault that is often not fixed, or more familiar with the term "misguided". For example, in a short-duration documentary that tells of the Blue Whale. Inside the film, it is said that the Blue Whale is the greatest living thing on earth. Of course, the statement is wrong, very wrong. All human beings on earth can prove a truth, that the Blue Whale is only a dwarf creature compared to the real gigantic creature on earth that is "Sequoiadendron giganteum" a giant tree located in the national park of one of the states of the U.S. and this tree has a mass weight of at least 2000 tons.
Placement of plants as low-level living creatures in the past as Aristotle has done is because plants can not move. Plants are already as we know have movement, which is even relatively fast when catching its prey. Very precise, "prey", hunting plants.
One of them is Venus which has an insect trap, the animal-eating plant has a fast movement while hunting its prey, not just the fly even the type of snail naked can be a meal of this plant. Ironically this fact was rejected for centuries in the ancient times, this is really against the laws of nature that people in those days believe that animals are eating plants. This forced law still controlled the minds of experts even until 1880. Charles Darwin assisted his son Francis, the world's first professor of plant physiology from Cambridge, made a revolutionary work on the movement of the plant under the title "The Power Of Movement In Plants" that. This work is truly a revolutionary, all scientists must be patient to wait until 1880 because no single scientist or even one person is allowed to discuss the movement of plants before Darwin.
Currently, students in the middle class have also studied various forms of plant movement. Very many patterns and forms of movement of plants, such as the common is the flowering process, this observation is very easy to do, we only need to record the buds for 24 hours a day and 7 days for a week until the flowers bloom, then we will get an interesting film how the flower petals move to bloom. A much more complicated movement can be observed if we record young bean plants. We will get a fantastic phenomenon about the movement of this creature.
Leaves Beans are always moving to catch the light. Sways, sideways, upwards and even spins as if on the boundary between the main leaf bone and the petiole has a bullet hinge as in the joints of our shoulders. Or even if we want a little imagination, it is very clear that the movement of the newly sprouted beans is like a parabolic periodic movement that seeks to capture the signal. Or even scientists who have a little romantic soul will say this movement is like an angel dancing with both wings.
A surprising fact occurred, in fact, plants are like animals, while still with the mother animals play, they practice to prepare for adult life. Even so, the recording of the growth of sunflower seeds illustrates the same thing with animals, this seed keeps on growing spinning every day. There is no exact match for these movements other than "they are playing", in this movement also according to Stefano Mancuso a professor of Plant Physiology can also be cited as their practice. The new seedling seed is practicing to prepare itself as an adult who must follow the daily sun movement. Plants are also sleeping, their Mimosa pudica closes its leaves and reduces movement during the night, and opens its leaves throughout the day and with much more movement, and pulls this sleep mechanism found in almost all the same things in plants, insects and of course animal. Plants are also able to communicate with each other, they are able to recognize different species among other plants, they are also able to communicate with other creatures such as insects, for example, they communicate by producing Volatile compounds to communicate both fellow plants and with other creatures such as animals.
Of all the handiwork of plants that are very impressive, it will arise one fundamental question, "how they (the plant) do it without an organ like the brain?". Back in 1880, Darwin in his 500-page book discussing the movement of this plant in the last paragraph writes:
"It is no exaggeration to say that the root end acts like a brain, as in lower animals"
In Darwin's statement, it seems to want to equate the position of plants with animals in a parable point of view, but the following facts will confirm that Darwin's statement is not merely a metaphor;
1. Root tip movement
In a research plant, the behavior observed a movement of the growth of the tip of a plant root, the movement is engineered under the direction of growing sideways upward. Seen clearly in the recordings of observation, the movement of this plant roots should be the movement of all animals creeping without legs. There is a curvature at the center of the root tip, which is a difficult or impossible motion if without a brain because to do this movement plants need to move different parts of the roots, and simultaneously synchronize the different parts of it in every movement.
2. Oxygen levels
An expert of plant physiology of Italian nationality Prof. Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florentia Studiorum examined the tip of the root. Mancuso found there are 3 parts of the root tip, between the rootstock with the meristem end there is a transition section which they call "transition zone". This part is very small with a size of less than one millimeter but occurs the largest oxygen consumption of all parts of the plant. In addition, the root part also produces the same movement of motion potential as the human brain neuron signals when exchanging information.
It is unlikely that large living beings have brains that are less than 1 mm in size, but we need to remember that they are exposed at the root end just before the meristematic part of the root, that is to the finest part of a root. We will try to mimic it if one end of the meristematic root has 0.5 mm (we take the smallest size) then what about the whole root tip of a plant. A simple comparison, from a small plant of Secale Cereale Mancuso, says the number of plant roots is nearly 14 million. Total root tip until it reaches 11.5 million, with total conversion length more than 600 km. Of course, we will imagine how big this plant brain if all the "transition zone" we put together. The conclusion will be a conclusion that is not a fake that the root is the brain of the plant.
Note:
The brain in question here is not a nerve center, although plants can transfer signals with action potential, plants have no central nerves or even nerve cells.
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@kryzsec
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Thank you for sharing Mancuso's work. I study under him at the University of Florence. His work in plant neurobiology is pushing the envelope of what we currently understand about the intelligence of the plant world. Last week in class, we had a long discussion about Aristotle. Can you believe that people are still citing his belief that plants are just inanimate objects that just process stimule blindly in order to grow over 2500 years later, even though there is a mountain of evidence from Mancuso, Simard, Gagliano, Darwin, and more that plants are actually intelligence? I hope that humanity will wake up soon to its plant blindness and start cocreating with them, as this is the only thing that can save us from the seventh mass extinction we are heading toward!