The Green Plant as an Intelligent Organism - Communication in Plants: Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life - page 8

species have been proposed and analysed in some detail. “Plant and animal
species are information processing entities of such complexity, integration
and adaptive competence that it may be scientifically fruitful to regard
them as intelligent” (Schull 1990). Schull (1990) indicates analogies between
learning and natural selection, memory with ecological niche, etc.
1.4
The Intelligence of Green Plants
“The tip of the root acts like the brain of one of the lower animals” (Darwin
1882).
Information processing, learning, memory, decision making, choice,
predictive modelling, associative memory, sensory integration and control
of behaviour are all aspects of biological intelligence. Information process-
ing, decision making, associative memory, sensory integration and control
of behaviour have already been mentioned in respect to plant cell signal
transduction. Numerous examples of direct memory can be found in Des-
biez et al. (1984, 1991), Jaffe and Shotwell (1980), Marx (2004), Trewavas
(1999), Verdus et al. (1997) and references therein. Indeed since green plants
arecomposedofmillionsofcellsandtheevidenceindicatestheintelligent
capabilities of individual cells, intelligent responses of the whole plant are
expected. Plant cell signal transduction uses a similar range of molecules
for transduction as animals (Gilroy and Trewavas 2001).
Intelligence is a behavioural property of the whole organism and this
requires integrated behaviour that is clearly evident (Hartnett and Bazzaz
1983, 1985; Turkington and Klein 1991; Turkington et al. 1991). “Plants have
evolved an integrated complex of hormonal systems - a coordinated but
non-centralised intelligence system that manages resources” (LaCerra and
Bingham 2002). Communication is complex, involving proteins, nucleic
acids, electrical communication and turgor information amongst many
other signals (Trewavas 2002, 2005). For example, rootstocks affect numer-
ous shoot characteristics when grafted and the root messages involve in
part transfer of specific homeobox proteins (Kim et al. 2001). Behavioural
changes in phenotype particularly in competition are constructed to opti-
mize fitness and efficient foraging behaviour is crucial.
Peak et al. (2004) have described an alternative mechanism, patchi-
ness of behaviour amongst groups of guard cells. Cooperative interactions
amongst these patches leads eventually to synchronization and subsequent
optimization of water relations of the leaf. Recognition of behaviourally
discrete patches of plant cells has been made for some time (Trewavas
2003) and the mechanism has parallels with synchronization in a network
of oscillators with distributed natural frequencies (Strogatz 2001).