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How plant intelligence can alleviate climate anxiety
In new book, plant wisdom is a balm for our changing planet
NON-FICTION
The Light Eaters: How the Invisible World of Plant Intelligence Offers New Understanding of Life on Earth
By Zoë Schlanger.
Harper, 2024 ($29.99)
For a species totally dependent on plants for food and a habitable planet, we give them curiously little respect. Museums and nature documentaries tend to relegate them to the background, a mere stage for the action of animal evolution. This is an old prejudice. Less than 1 percent of European Paleolithic cave paintings feature plants. If you are a plant despiser, The light devourers, a stunning book about recent discoveries in plant biology by journalist Zoë Schlanger, will transform the way you view not only plants but the nature of all life. And if you’re already convinced that plants are fascinating and important, your appreciation will deepen.
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Plant “intelligence” is a controversial idea among biologists. Shoddy but widely reported experiments conducted in the 1970s claimed to show human-like behaviors in plants, such as enjoying Beethoven and responding to polygraph tests. Disdain for this New Age froth meant that, until relatively recently, studies of the animalistic qualities in plants were taboo among respectable scientists. Now scientific discoveries have revived the debate. Through Schlanger’s careful reporting, we come to understand multiple perspectives rather than being bullied toward one side or another. Schlanger believes that plant biology is a “case study” of a scientific revolution in progress. The conflict between competing ideas is, she believes, a necessary part of the paradigm shift.
Curiosity drives Schlanger’s narrative. Do plants feel a wound? We feel his excitement and hesitation as he uses tweezers to pinch a watercress leaf. The plant has been genetically modified so that its cells glow when electrical charges pass through them. At first he hesitates too much with the pliers, but then he squeezes hard. The blade lights up immediately, “the veins burn like a neon sign.” A wave of electrical activity moves through the watercress at a millimeter per second until the entire plant is flooded with information about the damaged leaf. The parallels with human pain are visually obvious. Technology paves the way to empathy. As a gardener and cook, I pull up and cut plants many times a day. Through Schlanger’s vivid writings, I now understand these plants as living beings that respond to danger on a scale of seconds. As Schlanger writes of his own shift in perspective, I am “recovering material intimacy with the natural world.”
Should I feel guilty or stop gardening? Hardly. We are animals, so we must eat light indirectly by chewing on plants or animals that once ate plants. The waves of electrical activity in the veins of plants are not the same as the nerve impulses that flow from the pain receptors of animals. From a biological and ethical point of view, cutting cabbages is different from cutting animal meat. However, an anesthetic can silence a cabbage’s electrical signals just as it does an animal’s nerves.
The question of plant consciousness arises in the background of these intriguing findings. Wisely, Schlanger points out that we know little about the neural basis of consciousness in animals, much less in nerveless plants. But his visits to field sites and laboratories leave no doubt that, conscious or not, plants perceive their environment and make sophisticated decisions. The leaves pick up the sounds of caterpillars chewing and mount the appropriate chemical defenses. Flowers sweeten their nectar when they sense pollinators flying by. Flowers and bees sense each other through constantly changing electric fields. Plants appear to use memory to adjust their growth and even pollen presentation minute by minute.
The scientific study of plants has advanced to the point where we could remove the quotes from plant “intelligence” without fear of veering into pseudoscience. However, we must also recognize the wonderful otherness of plants. Plants feel, remember, and make decisions throughout their bodies, in contrast to our primarily brain-centered intelligence.
A personal journey motivates the book and gives it ethical weight. After six years of writing about climate change, Schlanger felt a “sense of trembling dread threatening to overshadow me.” To counter this darkness, she searched for stories that “seemed wonderful and alive,” a search that led her to plants. Sustained at home by the “satisfying vegetal drama” of climbing vines and unfolding leaves, she also found pleasure and solace in the latest botanical scientific discoveries. Reading about her search for plant wonders, I felt a growing sense of admiration for plants and kinship with her lives.
This shift in perspective is at the heart of the paradigm shift that Schlanger explores. Understanding plant intelligence reframes our everyday experience of eating plants or watching them grow in a sidewalk crack. In a time when we often feel alienated from a living world in crisis, it is good to remember that other species have agency and insight. Plants have thrived on Earth for 500 million years. They embody not only intelligence but also wisdom about how to thrive in the face of change.
