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| source: What Do Plants Talk About |
Not only can plants “see” light and “hear” vibrations,
they are now known to smell parasitic worms. These nematodes communicate with
each other using pheromones (specifically ascarosides), which in turn regulate
the worm’s development and behavior. We might think of it as wi-fi.
The chemical signal is excreted (or transmitted) from one
worm, and received by another. Plants, using that natural tendency of all
living things to be clever, hack into the nematode wi-fi network, and use that
information to regulate their own behavior and development. When you watch
roots grow in timelapse, you realize they're just like worms, wiggling through
the ground, looking for nutrients. Only they're not looking, they're smelling.
This should be a reminder to us that the thing we call
Smell is a primitive form of communication used by all living things. Plants
don't have brains, so they don't smell like we do. But they do have memories,
and even autobiographies. We would call this ontological history – these are
interactions stored in the ever-changing DNA of the plant. Experience is passed
on to subsequent generations.
The first organisms lived in a chemical world. And
although they may have been sensitive to light particles and waves of
vibration, they were also a receiver of chemical signals. And of the lot, the
chemo-signals were the most complex and required the most sophisticated
translation. Our brains – real human brains – grew through evolution out of the
olfactory bulb. We may associate the advanced cortical functions of our mind
with other, higher senses like vision and audition, but that whole thing is
undergirded by the primitive nose- brain. “We think because we
smell.” (Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, 1990)
Our impossibly complex brains can't really fathom what it
means for a plant to smell until we come to understand our own
chemically-encrypted selves.
Chemo-signal pattern recognition has come a long way, and
it’s a history worth looking into.
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