Garden! And doing so, you will discover a world of hidden ambitions, calculated cooperations, or even a solidarity with muscular wisdom.
"We all distinguish between plants and animals. We understand that plants, in general are immobile, rooted in the ground; they spread their green leaves to the heavens and feed on sunlight and soil."
"Plants depend largely on calcium ion channels, which suit their relatively slow lives perfectly. . . . plants are capable of what we would call sights, sounds, tactile signals, and much more. Plants know what to do, and then 'remember.' But without neurons, plants do not learn in the same way that animals do; instead they rely on a vast arsenal of different chemicals, what Darwin termed 'devices.' The blueprints for these must all be encoded in the plant's genome, and indeed plant' genomes are often larger than our own."
Oliver Sacks, "The Mental Life of Plants," (2014).
"And yet, Darwin insisted, they [plants and animals] were closer than one might think. . . . He thought the powers of movement, and especially of detecting and catching prey, in the insectivorous plants so remarkable that he, in a letter to botanist Asa Gray, he referred to Drosera, the sundew, only half-jokingly as not only a wonderful plant but 'a most sagacious animal'."
Oliver Sacks, "The Mental Life of Plants."
Sarracenia leucophylla, The Pitcher Plant family of carnivorous plants.
Oliver Sacks. "The Mental Life of Plants and Worms among Others," New York Review of Books, 61: #7. April 24, 2014. Pages 4-8.
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