Plant Intelligence: What We Don’t Know About the Plant World

Plants are motionless, silent, and still, and that is enough for us to consider them unintelligent. We know that our lives and the lives of all other living beings depend on them, we know that they are the main inhabitants of our planet, and yet we often take them for granted, accustomed as we are to barely considering them living beings and much more as tools to serve us. We are actually unaware of the fact that plant intelligence not only exists, but is astonishing, and that from all the things that are still to be discovered about the plant world, we could learn a lot.

Everything we know today about plant intelligence depends on the tenacity of intuitive scholars who went against the scientific community of their time to demonstrate the greatness of the plant world. First among them was Charles Darwin, who had already encountered several problems with the theory of evolution and who, in this case too, had to clash with the rigid anthropocentrism of his fellow scientists. His research and the studies conducted over the years are still fundamental today in the study of plants. Today, studying Darwinian theories and the plant world in great depth is Stefano Mancuso, an Italian botanist who has dedicated himself to the study of plant intelligence in his essay “Verde brillante”.

In fact, the reason why the assertion of a form of intelligence in the plant world is so difficult to accept has to do with human pride. By considering intelligence an exclusive characteristic of the mind, we narrow the field of intelligent beings to the animal world alone, of which man is the undisputed king. Admitting, instead, that there are different intelligences, and that we cannot compete with them, is equivalent to questioning human greatness. Something that was as difficult in Darwin's time as it is today.

Organs do not make the brain

One of the most widespread arguments that attempt to discredit the existence of a form of plant intelligence is that which associates intelligence with the presence of a brain. All animals have one, and it is what determines the level of their intellect. Based on size and complexity, but also on the ability to express themselves and make choices, we decide whether an animal is more or less intelligent, placing – obviously – the human being in first place.

But if animals are made of organs and, therefore, intelligence can be associated with one of them, it is different for plants. They do not have lungs, kidneys, or limbs, and yet they manage to live and survive just as well as animals do. Therefore, if they do not need lungs to breathe or a digestive system to feed themselves, it is risky to assume that they are unintelligent just because they do not have a brain. After all, just like the animal neural system, plants are able to perceive what is around them and make decisions based on the external environment, whether it is about sourcing resources or strategies to defend themselves from predators.

The difference between consciousness and intelligence

At this point, another observation that is easy to encounter is that which concerns consciousness. Plants are able to survive and adapt, like all living beings, but they do not have consciousness. They do not think, not only consciously, or at least that is what we believe. We even struggle to define them as living beings, because we associate the action of being with a particular consciousness of the self.

Well, if on one hand the existence of consciousness – albeit different from ours – cannot be ruled out, because we know very little about the plant world, on the other we must not confuse consciousness with intelligence. What we consider an intrinsic characteristic of all animals is, in fact, not always real: not all animals have self-awareness, indeed, many of them do not think in the way we understand this term, or do not recognize themselves as a self. Therefore, consciousness does not make intelligence, and its absence does not confirm the lack of intelligence in plants.

Plant intelligence is the ability to solve problems

The problem that arises, therefore, does not concern so much the existence or not of a form of intelligence in the plant world, but our definition of intelligence. Mancuso, in his “Verde Brillante”, proposes a definition of this ability of living beings that is different but more functional to the understanding of the world of plants. He proposes to consider intelligence as the ability to solve problems. And, even if they always seem motionless and at the mercy of events, plants are wonderfully good at this.

First of all, plants have developed a cutting-edge defense system against predators. As we mentioned earlier, they do not have organs, so that a herbivorous predator that eats a piece of them does not compromise the survival of the entire organism. Furthermore, they are not even as motionless as we think. Even if slowly, their roots move and orient themselves within the soil in search of the nutrients they need most, or to avoid the presence of predators or dangers. They are able to make choices, based on their needs, and orient their branches where needed to reach nutrients, water, light, oxygen. Plants are able to record the parameters of the surrounding environment and make decisions based on what they perceive. In short, what we define as brain functions may not be enclosed in a single point of the plant, but they are not absent. Every component, in fact, is able to perform the same functions as the animal world.

Reconsidering the strength of the plant world and plant intelligence is, therefore, fundamental. On one hand, in fact, it would allow us to downsize human pride, and above all to stop underestimating the importance of plants for life on Earth. On the other, it would allow us to learn from the study of living beings that are different from us but intelligent and far-sighted. Even attention to the environment, not only as a source of energy and life functional to our well-being, but as a system made of living beings that all deserve the same respect, starts from this. And, who knows, maybe by deepening our knowledge of plants, we will discover that we are not so different from them after all.