If Plants Could Talk

Radio Atlantic

Staff writer Zoë Schlanger is the proud owner of a petunia that glows in the dark. But she doesn’t just appreciate the novelty houseplant as work of science. Zoë sees its glow as a way to help us appreciate plants as more alive, more vital, and more complex than we humans typically do. Because in recent years, some scientists have reopened a provocative debate: Are plants intelligent?

They’ve devised experiments that break down elements of this big broad question: Can plants be said to hear? Sense touch? Communicate? Make decisions? Recognize kin?

Schlanger is the author of the upcoming book: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life in Earth. How could a thing without a brain be considered intelligent? Schlanger has spoken with dozens of botanists, from the most renegade to the most cautious, and she reports back on the state of the revolution in thinking.

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