The Mild Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Affords a New Understanding of Life on Earth

Eye opening
The author is a nature lover who thinks like a scientist and writes well. The subject is fascinating, eye opening. The beginning of the book is somewhat marred by too much attention to controversies about whether words like intelligence can be applied to plants. The bottom line is that they are sophisticated in what they can learn from the environment and how they adapt to that learning. In the following, each capability applies to at least some plants, not necessarily all plant species. Plants have memories; some time their flower display to the intervals between bee visits, and will change the next day if the interval changes. They can count, which guides the Venus Fly Trap whether a touch is by prey, more touches, or some random object blown by wind. They can distinguish kin from others which impacts how loudly they send out chemical distress signals or how aggressively they promote their root growth. A root can determine not only in which direction there is a source of water, but whether it will encounter soft clay or hard rock. Depending on the quality of light falling on them, a plant can sense if it is being reflected from rival plant leaves so that it needs to grow taller. In a lab, parasitic dodder vine seedlings appeared to detect the size, shape, and distance of neighboring plants, and used that information to decide which plants to grow toward and parasitize. Depending on the sound of chewing, a plant can summon an appropriate predator. If a plant senses a drier environment, it can modify its seeds so they have more porous surface area. Plants are experts in formulating appropriate chemicals. They can make their leaves distasteful or even deadly to predators. They use volatile chemicals for communicating with other plants, or between different plant parts; for the latter, they also use electrical signals, hormones, and other non-volatile chemicals. Some plants can make their leaves appear like those plants they are growing among, possibly using sight, but more likely because of microbial RNA shared with the other plants. Like humans, microbial RNAs play a big role. Plants also rely on fungi attached to their roots for gathering resources, communicating, and possibly sensing the environment. How do plants do all this without a brain – by distributed intelligence. Note, “when neuroscientists peer inside the (human) brain, they find a distributed network. No discernible command post exists.” Pollution, and even rising CO2 levels, can impair the plant’s use of volatile chemicals. Breeding plants in a protected environment can have the side effect of selecting for plants with less innate capability to withstand pests.

plants as persons?
Far from being unseen, the amazing ability of plants to interact with their environment is evident to anyone who looks. This author’s contribution is to follow a personal epiphany to track the latest research on just how profound this interaction is. Along the way, she awakens herself and the reader to the realization that plants are not a separate and lesser kingdom of life, a concept she crystallizes in the catchphrase “all biology is ecology.” More provocatively, she argues that as the foundation of the food chain and having an ability to act with intention that borders on “intelligence,” it may be the light eaters’ world and we’re just living in it. She is not the first to till this intellectual furrow. It reminds me of Stefano Mancuso’s Brilliant Green of 2015, and the exquisite prose of Michael Pollan’s thesis in Botany of Desire. But I bought this book for an update on the research and thinking on this subject.For the first 200-plus pages, I was enthralled by one astounding revelation after another of plant capabilities, divided into chapters devoted to analogs of traditionally animal attributes, ranging from communication to memory to purposeful movement. Perhaps the most stunning was the description of a vine that could camouflage itself by physically mimicking neighbouring plants, like a chameleon. All this is explained in extensive but accessible detail. Real-time narratives of the original observations by field scientists add a little travel and adventure to the mix.And then came the final chapter, Plant Futures. In it, the author comes full circle from her meta-musings in the Prologue about the place of plants in the world and our perception of them. If the text had been edited to stop with the previous chapter, I would be enthusiastically showering it with five stars. But no. For some reason, she jumps through semantic hoops and deep into philosophical rabbit holes of whether plants are intelligent, or legally qualify as “persons.” As if the awe and wonder she had crafted in the previous ten chapters were not sufficiently spirit-stirring. To add insult to metaphysical meandering, when invited to share tea and cookies in the home of an elderly scientist whom she acknowledges as a pioneer of this way of thinking, she disparages him for seeming too pessimistic and expresses impatience that he does not share her preconceived insights. To so disrespect an interview subject in print and not even thank him in the Acknowledgements makes me wonder why anyone who reads this book would ever agree to an interview by this otherwise capable writer.My comments are those of a random reader. I have no acquaintance with the author or any of her sources.

Very interesting well worth getting

Absolutely fascinating! Worthwhile read for anybody interested not only in plants but also in thinking about what consciousness, memory, intelligence actually are …