Back in the 1970s, a book called The Secret Life of Plants exploded onto The NY Times best seller list, and ironically, set the field of plant research back decades. While the authors were ahead of their time in claiming that plants were sentient, their less than rigorous research also claimed plants were telepathic, and preferred classical music to rock and roll. That corn can hear is the basis for a dad joke, but the question of whether all the plants (without ears) can hear is getting some renewed scientific attention. Zoë Schlanger, a climate writer for The Atlantic, delivers “THE LIGHT EATERS: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth,” a collection of pop-science essays about the latest in plant research. 

No one today is getting any grants for their ‘Bloomin’ To Bach 2.0′ playlists, but there’s a lab tech out there somewhere torturing plants with the sounds of hungry caterpillars to learn how they ramp up tannins in their leaves to make themselves less tasty. Another scientist plays tones to alfalfa that increases their production of vitamin C, and yet another plays tones to help rice survive drought. Considering that US agriculture selects for crop size over pest resistance and subsequently uses a billion pounds of pesticides every year, this kind of research could have huge ecological consequences. “One can imagine a future where farmers set up boom boxes instead of crop dusters.” 

The more challenging anthropomorphic question being researched is: can plants SEE? Some biologists are studying the Chilean shape-shifting vine (Boquila) which mimics the leaves of the plants that it climbs. The jury is still out on whether photoreceptors can function as a kind of sight or not, but plants do appear to have spatial awareness. For example, when there is a nutrient source halfway between two sunflowers, they will each seek a different food source, but if it is less than half way, the nearer sunflower will claim it. Many plants are now understood to be eusocial organisms—meaning that, like bees, communities create divisions of labor where some reproduce and others labor toward the colony, or the collective body. These cooperative behaviors challenge Darwinian models of competition, and offer an opportunity to remodel the way we see the world. “Plants will go on being plants whatever we decide to think of them, but how we decide to think of them could change everything for us.” 

Most plants move far too slowly for the unrooted to have taken much notice, until now. We are discovering how much plants communicate across species, and even manipulate more mobile creatures. The Australian Spider Orchid shapes its flowers to look like a female spider in order to trick the male into thinking it’s having sex, all while the orchid coats it with pollen. A study of tomatoes found that while they tolerate some amount of being gobbled up by caterpillars, when  they feel like enough is enough, they will send a chemical signal on the breeze to summon wasps to take care of them. 

One of the biggest questions being researched is where are plant brains? Thanks to some creative gene splicing of plants with glowing green jellyfish, scientists can now see the electrical currents pulsing through a plant when it’s wounded. It looks very similar to the electrical message sent to our brain when we stub our toe, for example. What we can’t wrap our heads around is how or where that information is interpreted–most likely because we’re committed to processing information with our heads. 

However, there is a profound shift in how scientists are framing their curiosity. Early experiments that involved playing vinyl to plants or teaching sign language to chimps, have been replaced by research that attempts to be better a listener. Observing what plants and animals are saying to each other is doing away with archaic hierarchies of intelligence, and expanding our comprehension of different kinds of consciousness. “It’s not that plants are human, but that humans are just one kind of person, as are animals. Personhood means one has agency and volition and the right to exist for their own sake.” 

This budding human regard for plants and plant intelligence asks us to consider the legacies of colonialism and dominion lingering in our scientific understanding. With a historian’s pen, Schlanger draws the connection between the end of vivisection and the beginning of the suffragettes’ movement. “As the circle of rights widens, it’s hard to see why it should not keep widening.” This evolution of respect has mounted legal standing. Schlanger tracks the case of the Sierra Club suing Disney on behalf of a Californian forest. And more recently, Minnesota wild rice had its day in court against Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources—not wild rice producers or a lobbying group, but wild rice itself stood against the state over violations of its rights. 

Schlanger has written extensively about the climate crisis, and by now, we’re familiar with the cycle of alarm bells and climate fatigue. The Light Eaters, however, reframes that perspective from a world on the verge of extinction to a world brimming with life and scientific discovery. What turns the pages of this book is Schlanger’s personal wonder—a contact high with someone so in awe of the natural world. Consider the sea slug (elysia timida). These little animals start out brown and hungry. When they digest algae, they keep the chloroplasts of the algae cells intact and spread them around their bodies. Now, the sea slug is green and can wield the chloroplasts just like a plant, turning light into sugar for food. The botanical tour Schlanger offers is asking: who can learn about such an astonishing place and not be moved to save it?

josh steinbauer

Josh Steinbauer cried a lot at the Andrea Gibson documentary. He makes art and film in NYC. He thinks of billionaires as policy failures. His drawings and videos have been seen in Heaven, No Moon, LIC Culture Lab, Flushing Town Hall, Harvard Art Museum, and American Folk Art Museum. He calls his mom to chat on Sundays, usually about good books and bad politicians. His series of author portraits/reviews, Portrait of a Book Report, has been published in The Offing, Rain Taxi, Panorama Journal, and InParenthesis. He invented the “Sloppy Joe-nut” but investors found the name too off-putting.