Intelligence has long been considered a uniquely human trait. It has certainly played a defining role in the evolution of our species, from the development of new technologies that have helped us to thrive, to the simple yet effective ways we navigate our daily lives. Carl Linnaeus even had the boldness to name our species Homo sapiens, or ‘wise man’.
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However this idea has gradually been challenged, as it is now generally recognised that other animals also possess similar abilities, usually based on their resemblances to our behaviour. But what if we take a wider view? Let’s consider, as I do, intelligence to be the process of sensing information from the surrounding environment, analysing it and then acting accordingly to ensure survival. Then, every lifeform possesses it.
If we recognise that plants are intelligent beings, how does that change our relationships?
Intelligence is an important driving force for all life. Without it, any species would quickly become extinct. Given that plants have been on this planet for 420 million years, they’ve clearly been using their form of
intelligence successfully. Being mostly sessile, plants have had to evolve sophisticated sensory strategies to obtain the resources they need and to fend off predators. They may not have a centralised brain or nervous system, but nonetheless there is growing evidence they may have the abilities to learn, use memory, make decisions, recognise kin and communicate.
Plants do these things very differently from animals, but that in no way makes them less important. Some of their faculties are localised in specific parts of their anatomy, while others are distributed across it. ‘Hearing’ (responding to sound waves) and emitting sounds, perception of the light spectrum, ‘smelling’ (detecting scent) and releasing odours are just some of the activities they engage in.
There are even indications that individual plants within a species may have personal characteristics that differ to their kin, probably as a means to ensure that the species is diverse and resilient. Plants use their wonderful abilities to interact with each other as well as with other species in mutually beneficial ways, including insects above ground and fungal mycelia and bacteria in the soil.
Plants do these things very differently from animals, but that in no way makes them less important.
These revelations make apparent how sophisticated and complex life really is, and that all organic life forms are equally valid in and of themselves, as well as for the important roles they play in complex ecological networks.
Alongside this new appreciation of the biological spectrum, there has also been a steadily growing movement for giving aspects of the natural world the legal status of personhood. The rationale is to preserve healthy ecosystems and the biodiversity that natural areas harbour, to protect them from exploitation, and to recognise their cultural importance to indigenous peoples. Given that we already grant the status of legal personhood to corporations, such as Amazon, why not also the Amazon rainforest?
In 2008, Ecuador made a landmark ruling, and became the first country to enshrine legal rights to nature in its national constitution, and other countries have followed suit. New Zealand (Aotearoa) has recognised the legal rights of the Te Urewera forest, Whanganui River and Mount Taranaki.
This then raises questions about how we would garden, if we were to treat plants with dignity and recognise their rights.
In the USA, the right to flourish was accorded to Lake Erie; and in Canada, legal personhood was given to the Muteshekau-shipu (Magpie River). Plants have also been given similar consideration. In the USA, manoomin wild rice in Minnesota was granted rights to evolve in a natural environment free from industrial pollution and human-caused, climate-change impacts. If we start to recognise plants as intelligent beings, how does that change our relationships with them? After all, they’ve been residents of the planet much longer than we have, so surely have a valid claim to ‘living their best lives’, rather than suffering indignities at the hands of humans.
This then raises questions about how we would garden, if we were to treat plants with dignity and recognise their rights. Would a garden be a form of enforced internment for plants, or could weeding be considered a form of murder? Would we still be able to cut, dig and prune with impunity or would we have to find novel ways to garden? These more extreme extrapolations aside, could these new ways of thinking and behaving bring us closer to plants? Perhaps they could lead to respectful forms of partnership and kinship, forging mutually beneficial ways of living together on this precious planet we share.