Alisa Opar, Guest
Waking Times
The plant world is a violent place. When munching caterpillars or grazing cattle set their sights on a luscious leaf, a plant can’t hightail it out of harm’s way. Instead, flora fight back with noxious chemicals. But what repels one critter may not work on the next hungry mouth, explains Heidi Appel, a senior research scientist in the Bond Life Sciences Center at the University of Missouri. She’s found that some plants can actually hear their attackers noshing away, discern which species is chowing down—and respond accordingly to each assailant.
That’s right: Plants can hear and feel touch, and Appel’s work is revealing that their sensory systems are far more complex than previously realized. “They are way more clever than we give them credit for,” she says. They also have their own way of seeing, she points out—just watch a seedling grow toward a light source—and smelling, too, in how they sense volatiles released as warning signals by other plants.
