Beautiful to see and admire, as well as an integral part of our diet, plants would also be something more: they would be living organisms capable of "seeing". This is the thesis put forward by a scientific article that has just appeared in the magazine Trends in Plant Science, which once again explores the subject, as complex as it is fascinating, of the intelligence of the plant world.
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Beautiful to see and admire, as well as an integral part of our diet, plants would also be something more: they would be living organisms able to "see".
This is the thesis put forward by a scientific article that has just appeared in the journal Trends in Plant Science, which once again explores the complex and fascinating theme of the intelligence of the plant world.
The study in question - Vision in Plants via Plant-Specific Ocelli? - is signed by Stefano Mancuso, director of the LINV, Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology of the University of Florence, and by Frantisek Baluska, Professor of Cell Biology in Bonn, and speculates that plants are capable of see shapes and colors, despite being devoid of eyes and a nervous system.
The hypothesis does not arise out of nowhere: it is not in fact the first time that studies and research end up attributing to plants a sort of "Intelligence" and "awareness" of what surrounds them, from the ability to "feel" and "memorize" to that of reacting, in some way, to external stimuli.
READ also: Plants have memory: they learn and remember all information
But what leads Mancuso and Baluska to hypothesize that plants are endowed with a faculty comparable to vision? The starting point is some previous studies, as well as experiences and observations conducted over time. In particular, the researchers observed how some plants are provided with mimetic ability, that is, they are able to take the appearance of the elements that surround them, as happens, for example, in the case of Boquilla Trifoliata, a plant species widespread in South America.
"We came to elaborate this theory by observing a series of previous studies, collecting clues and putting them in line [...]." - Mancuso explains - “Let's take the case of Boquilla trifoliata. It is a plant that lives in Chile and whose behavior was described in 2014: this plant has an extraordinary mimetic ability, it climbs a tree and its leaves take the shape of the leaves of the plant to which it climbs. That is changes its morphology, color, consistency. Its leaves can become thicker, thinner, they can even get thorns ".
A behavior that can only be explained by admitting, on the part of the trifoliata Boquilla, a sort of ability to "see" the surrounding world, recognizing the shapes and colors of the plants that surround it and "adapting" to them.
"In order to be able to imitate something, you need to know what you want to imitate." - states Mancuso himself.
Another clue comes from observing the behavior of the Arabidopsis, a classic laboratory plant.
"If we completely isolate it under a glass capsule, it changes behavior according to the plant we place next to it: for example, it grows more or grows less." - Mancuso explains - “What we want to argue is that the vision is not proper to the most complex organisms, but also to the simpler levels of life, starting with the single-celled ones. It is not a question of real eyes, but of 'lenses' capable, from the leaves, of conveying the rays of light and the images they receive. "
In short, it is as if the plants were equipped with sensors on the leaves, which somehow allow them to decipher what surrounds them, in an analogous mechanism, even if not superimposable, to what we commonly define "vision".
In recent years, the research conducted by prof. Mancuso have contributed to shedding new light on the plant world, bringing out new, interesting characteristics and capabilities to be explored.
Lisa Vagnozzi
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