Plants

This is an enlightening book detailing the latest research on plant 'intelligence' or 'consciousness', although even among researchers there is still much disagreement on what terms to use to describe what they are discovering. That is, what word best describes the ability of plants to 'hear' the specific sounds of caterpillars muching on their leaves and respond appropriately with specific chemical insecticides to deter them? Or of the ability of common tomato plants to produce a chemical that can literally make caterpillars stop eating their leaves and start eating one another? Or the ability of some plants to recognize plants of their own genetic relation and so not grow their roots towards them in order to share resources while not doing that with unrelated plants? The list of 'intelligent' behavior is expanding as researchers continue to investigate, with more and more evidence accumulating to vindicate what I called 'sentience' among plants in Anti-Clock. For decades scientists were hesitant to study such things because of bias and fear of losing grants; such research is too borderline from the 'hard' sciences and open to mystical interpretation. But things have opened up in recent years and some of the discoveries are remarkable. Did you know that common ferns reproduce through spores that develop into a a tiny plant called a gametophyte, where the male reproductive structures on that plant produce sperm that swim in the moisture towards the female structure. So this book details all manner of new research about plants,which predate human beings by hundreds of millions of years and without which we would not exist.