From the memories of flowers to the sociability of trees, the cognitive capacities of our vegetal cousins is all around us. But the slow, secretive intelligence of plant life is often overlooked. It seems that, when deciding whether to interpret behaviour as ‘intelligent’, we rely on anthropomorphic prototypes – as we are animals ourselves it is intuitive to recognise animal-like behaviour as behaviour and easy to fall blind to the behviour of plants.
Once we expand our vista of curiosity beyond the animal kingdom – to look at plants, fungi, bacteria, Protozoa – we may be surprised to find that many of these organisms share the same basic behavioural strategies and principals as us, including the capacity for kinds of learning and memory.
Fiona Rose Illustration 