Who Speaks for the Plants?

A rose by any other name might be a chrysanthemum.

Who Speaks for the Plants?

An investigation into the strange and amazing world of flora.

So what is it with plants? What's up with all those bushes and trees, flowers and grasses, molds, mushrooms, fungi and lichens? Are they the truly dominant life forms on Earth? Other than microbes, which are really the truly dominant life form. And especially bacteria, which are totally the truly dominant life form.

Bacteria and viruses? What's their story? Many scientists think viruses aren't even truly alive at all; they're sometimes missing one or more of those qualifications we delineate as to what determines living from nonliving things.

The Earth is occupied by only three elements, right? Animal, vegetable, and mineral. It's what we've always been taught -- and thought.

While we're pretty sure that all bacteria are animals of one sort or another, a lot of doubt surrounds those viruses, which some believe should be put into a classification all their own -- neither plant nor animal.

Well, this essay is about plants, so we'll have to leave bacteria and viruses for another day. Unless it turns out that some viruses are plants, like some bacteria might well be also. Or are. Or vice versa. Who can keep track of all this stuff? For now, allow me to focus solely on plants; they're mysterious enough for a thousand articles. All of which I plan on getting around to -- eventually.

Bacteria probably antedate all other life forms. This assertion already lands me on thin ice, however, because they keep finding more and more primitive animals lying deep beneath the polar regions and elsewhere, like in China. Since plants were among the first to colonize dry land or shallow tide pools -- and even that's a stretch -- it's somewhat safe to assume that plants evolved, did their own thing for a long time, and eventually occupied places all around the globe.

Keep in mind that we're not talking sequoias here, but the most rudimentary kinds of stuff -- probably molds and funguses at first, all kinds of algae and other slimy growths.

It wasn't long, however, before bushes and primitive trees started rising up out of the muck. Lots of ferns and fronds. Lots. No flowers yet, though. Nope, flowers wouldn't be around for a long time yet. Possibly not until the age of dinosaurs. But I digress. Okay, maybe a few here or there, an orchid, maybe, but not many, and not anything like we have today. Or that a Brontosaurus might have chomped on.

Most flowers are dependent on a partner in their mating game. Insects. Pollinators. For lots of blooms, you need lots of tiny visitors to spread your pollen around. Not that I'm an expert when it comes to such things, but I know my bees. Now if I could just get to know my birds, things might really get interesting. But I digress.

Speaking of bees, when did they first enter the picture? Well, they were late to the party also, along with flowers. No, some of the very first guys on the block were your friends and mine -- spiders! Plus centipedes and millipedes, all rushing around gulping down whatever else was scurrying through those bushes we mentioned earlier.

It's funny, because we usually think of primitive, air-breathing fish being among the earliest to wiggle out of the shallows and slowly become the first animals to do their Columbus imitations. Nope. Those fish fellas were also late to the festivities.

Long before the first sardine with a snorkel found his way out of the water, other sea creatures, those with long, spindly legs, exoskeletons and segmented bodies, had already set up picnic tables on beaches everywhere. Small size and the ability to breathe through any number of bodily orifices, probably gave way -- and quickly so -- to agile hunters capable of preying on all the rest of those even smaller critters who had tip-toed out of the mud and multiplied like crazy.

And why not? The whole world was a vegetarian's dream come true. You're the first to arrive and the buffet table is stocked forest floor to treetop. Yumm.

Off in the distance, carnivorous spiders, millipedes and others are patiently waiting for the vegans to stuff themselves, and then be too fat to get away. Yumm.

Amid all the drama that surrounded them, the trees and plants stood as mute witnesses, seemingly unmoved and unimpressed by the antics of the more mobile forest tenants that surrounded them. And lived in them. Scampered up their branches, bore holes in their trunks, and ate them, too.

Well, some of the plants fought back. They weren't totally without some tricks of their own, up their stems. The world is full of these carnivorous plants, most of them ancient in origin, and many with which we're quite familiar. The Venus Fly Trap, or Pitcher plants, for example, are certainly among the most famous.

For the most part, however, symbiotic relationships became the order of the day, and it wasn't long before bugs (including lots of ants) had made their peace and everybody was getting along not just amicably, but to the mutual benefit of everyone. And the happier the insects were, the more they multiplied, which was just peachy as far as those spiders and millipedes were concerned.

What we begin to see is that the story of plants and trees did not take place in a vacuum. Their story is inseparable from that of the insects and spiders as well. As time passed, each grew more and more dependent, one upon the other, until today there is hardly a weed which doesn't rely on some bug or insect as part of its growth or reproduction cycle.

Well, that's all very interesting, but it still doesn't answer the core question we started out with, namely what the heck kind of things are plants? Really. Do they have minds, for instance? Not like ours, of course, but their own versions of consciousness? We know that insects think in some fashion; they appear aware of the world, in their own way. We seem to know a thousand times more about how a fruit fly gestates, than we do as to how a tree "views" its environment, let alone the world at large.

And speaking of large, ancient redwoods make blue whales look like sardines by comparisons. The largest of any living thing to ever grow on Earth, with heights measuring hundreds and hundreds of feet, how might a coniferous sequoia view the world? And while we may kick at a bothersome weed and dismiss it the same as we might a small rock, one can't help but gaze heavenward, up into the lofty, sky-borne branches of a magnificent redwood, and wonder whether some form of soul resides inside such a creation. Let alone a consciousness -- a mind even.

Still larger than any redwood forest, but more subtle, are the endless acres of soft grasses which cover immense swaths of rolling plains. Whether on the African savanna or the champaigns of Kansas, the grasses are their own nation, and among the oldest of all leafy plants. Like a scene out of the Wizard of Oz, imagine a time before the trees, where modest hills as far as the eye might see, were little more than lush carpets -- like ocean waves -- of tall grasses.

So what are we to make of all this greenery, this botanical garden and arboretum as mysterious as any tale of the supernatural? One of the most oft-asked questions is whether or not plants feel pain in some way, which further presumes a level of consciousness that is fairly advanced. Since we assume, rightly or wrongly, that ants and flies don't suffer physical pain in a manner that might tug at our heartstrings, most of us presume that plants, trees, and the like, fall into a similar if not identical category of painlessness, or numbness, or some such obliviousness to human concepts of hurting and injury.

But if sap or other plant liquids were the color of animal blood, for instance, might that not make quite a difference in how we approach the subject? If plants made sounds or responded to their environment in more familiar ways, our attitudes and ideas about our green cousins might be altogether different than they are otherwise. It is the seeming passivity, though, the very lack of perceptible reactions -- even to fire -- that leads us to view the botanical world as little more than decorative life-support.

In the absence of hard evidence that supports our understanding of how plants think -- or if they do at all -- each of us is pretty much left to decide for ourselves as to how we wish to relate to our verdant fellow travelers.

Honestly, I'm of the strong opinion that plants are such an extraordinarily different kind of life form from ourselves, that to impose or insinuate strictly human emotions upon such entities is somewhat insulting -- to them. As if, in all their sophistication, the poor things are entirely at the mercy of those nasty humans. Especially the vegetarian ones. I think plants deserve more credit than that. Personally, I consider the notion that part of a plant's life cycle -- its destiny, if you will -- is to be eaten and recycled accordingly. Until I see proof to the contrary, I dare someone to say such a theory is as crazy as it sounds.

The subject of plants probably cannot be discussed without figuring the role of time into the equation. The single most obvious difference between plants and animals are the twin dynamics of movement and motion. And how both of these factors play into aspects of growth and maturity. It's as if trees and other flora share more in common with rocks and dirt, than they do their fauna cousins. Likely distant cousins at best.

If searching for the characteristics of an alien life form, different from Earth, one could do a lot worse than consider non-motile plants as living models of how different two predominant forms might be -- and still coexist in perfect harmony, one with the other.

It's certainly not a stretch to suggest that plants operate on a time frame significantly different from Earth's other major lifeforms. Yet this is not entirely true as a statement of fact. Plants react to the sun in a multitude of dramatic and visually obvious ways. Some are aware of the moon and its presence or lack of same, in the nighttime sky.

Via time-lapse photography, we see how the world's flora moves with the same elegance and gracefulness of any other creature; it just does so at a greatly reduced rate of speed. If plants possessed eyes, they would surely view our world as a frenetic, out-of-control blur of ceaseless activity. Like a film clip from a silent movie, but sped up a hundred times faster, the whole world, clouds included, would appear to move at some unfathomably hurried pace.

Is it any wonder that philosophers and monks alike turn to the trees and flowers for a serenity of spirit, a soothing of the soul?

This essay began in the great oceans and witnessed the first plants as their metaphorical tendrils pierced the damp mud of barren land and proceeded to blanket the Earth in a new sea of green. Those same plants still wander the oceans, rising and falling with every wave the same as blades of grass bend to and fro amid a gentle evening breeze.

Whatever secrets plants may harbor, yet to be discovered -- whether they possess an intelligence or consciousness yet to be understood -- we could not imagine a world without them. Nor could we survive long in their absence. An intimate, inseparable bond exists between us and them, whoever they are.

It's also more than a bit disconcerting when we realize that those scruffy weeds were here long before ourselves. And were likely quite content to share the world without people pulling them out of the ground. And calling them weeds.

We usually think in terms of which animal might inherit the Earth should humans go the way of the dinosaurs. Whoever takes our place, one thing is for sure: they'll probably have fresh flowers sprucing up the neighborhood.