The Memories of Plants | Hacker News Reader

The Memories of Plants

atlasobscura.com

109 pointsraleec33 comments

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I wonder to what extent cuttings are effected by these epigenetic memories?

Ex.

- Grow plant A. Expose it to stimuli to make it form a 'memory'

- Take a cutting from plant A and root it, making plant B.

- Test plant B for response to the stimulus.

Does plant B have the memory? If so, how many cutting-generations does it take for the memory to decay?

There's probably no reason cuttings should be different than a whole plant as they don't have any fundamental difference. Unless the roots themselves have an importance in the process (since the cuttings will then grow new "inexperienced" roots) but I doubt it.

I'm more intrigued by what would happen with grafts.

Does rootstock transmit memories ("memories") to a scion, does a scion transmit memories to rootstock, does it work with interspecific grafts, does it work with intergeneric grafts? Do multiple scions transmit memories between each other?

> There's probably no reason cuttings should be different than a whole plant

Its uncommon, but it happens sometimes... and there can be in fact a fundamental difference: different hormone gradient. A well known case is with ivy. If you take cuttings on flowered stems of common ivy, the new plants retain the rombic leaf shape typical of reproductive stems and the effect last for the life of this first leaves. The ivy born from seeds do not have this rombic leaves until many years later, when they mature.

> Does rootstock transmit "memories" to a scion

Not, because memories are stored in neurons and plants do not have this, but is a well known fact also that rootstock can change the scion behaviour (for example improving the sugar in fruits and advancing the age of first maturation). If you change 'memories' by 'chemicals', the answer could be yes, of course. It depends on the definition of what could be loosely called as 'memory' in a plant.

That's very interesting and I'm going to search for answers to this! Thanks for this comment.

A surprisingly common argument against veganism is "but plants feel pain, too," based on interpretations of articles such as this one on Vice [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a-botanis...]. I suppose the argument is that, if there is any amount of cruelty in our consumption, then we may as well surrender to this fact and eat whatever we want. (Also, haha vegans are dumb.) I'm sure this study will be added as support for this perspective.

But it should be obvious that even if plants were proven to be sentient, vegans would continue to eat them. Our primary directive on this planet is to survive, just like every other organism. Once that's settled we can focus on doing so with as little suffering as possible, to the best of our ability.

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often.

The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

How does harvesting animals cause less suffering, in the real world we live in? The usual answer is "well IF you are friends with your cow/chicken and give it lots of pasture and then you squeeze it for milk occasionally and one day quickly and painlessly end its life, then its humane" but then motte-and-bailey--style that gets used to excuse a diet full of factory-farmed meat and chicken trucks and forcibly-impregnating cows and then seizing and killing their newborns[1], which is the vast vast majority of meat consumption.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+trucks&source=lnms&t...

[2] https://www.ciwf.com/farm-animals/cows/dairy-cows/

All my meat is raised on open pasture locally, fed only on wild grasses. I specifically said factory farms are a clear problem. Thanks for talking past me and ignoring my point. This is what makes conversing wih you people get on my nerves. Show some intellectual respect and get some in retuen.

I agree with you on all your points. However, you last two sentences are not necessary. To be honest, the first time i read your comment i though the same thing. Only on a re-read did i see your last little bit of the message addresses that argument.

Also Capitalism exacerbates this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Dairy_Checkoff

Harvesting animals also requires harvesting plants, for animal feed. It takes a lot more plant matter to create 1000 Calories worth of beef than of any plant-based food, probably around ten times more based on the amount of food energy required / food energy provided of meat.

> And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often

And the meat-man with a vengeance shows up. I kid you not, this stereotype holds true all too often. And, may I add, puzzles me absolutely no end. What is it about some people's restrictive dietary choices that regularly sets off these spasms of all too vocal disapproval in the minds of certain people?

I do not, as a general rule, eat meat. The predictable uninvited spluttering opinions on that quite unremarkable situation are beginning to get really old. Please!

And the meat-man with a vengeance shows up.

Yeah but he only showed up because the vegan made the discussion about veganism. People who eat meat aren't going around making every discussion about eating meat, they just appear when vegans do that.

She just stepped in early. I've had so many of these articles thrown in my face without me making the topic about veganism. There is a an active defensiveness spewing out of some carnivores when vegs are around.

To the extent someone's choices don't affect me, I'm also unaware of them. Your business is your business, yada yada. But if I know you're a vegan, it's because at some point you made it my business, so I think I'm justified in commenting on it.

For the most part I agree with you. There's a lot of sneering at vegans, and most vegans are harmless and anonymous. As with everything, it's the preachy ones who spoil everything.

Actually, neither the grandparent or I (of the snarky subreply) made any explicit declaration of veganism. I most emphatically am not a vegan. I just pragmatically don't eat meat. I keep my opinions of meat-eating largely to myself, and should prefer to receive a roughly equivalent treatment.

> The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

Couldn't you argue that since in order to harvest animals you must harvest plants for the animals to eat. So definitely more suffering is produced by harvesting animals. This is amplified even more so when you consider that you have to harvest more plants for producing meat than you would if you just ate the plants.

There are other factors too including carcinogens in meat

http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/it...

It's incredibly difficult to measure what does and does not cause cancer. In reality it's an aggregate of your genetics and how you lived your life, plus a big helping of luck.

As with all "cancer-causing" substances it's worth being more clear. Firstly, the official advice is that processed meats (that involve curing, smoking, etc) and red meats (beef, lamb, goat and pork) increase your risk of cancer. It's not a blanket "meat contains carcinogens" as far as I can tell (chicken seems to be fine - no doubt the Daily Mail would say otherwise).

The actual risk in the study is a +18% chance of colon cancer, but the average risk is only 5%. If you ate 4 slices of bacon a day, your risk goes up to 6%. That may well be a statistically significant number, but as an individual +1% is well in the noise where other factors could dominate. There is an increased risk for other cancers, but I don't have the numbers and I guess they were lower.

Well you could become a fungitarian I guess? You'd really struggle to get enough calories purely from fungus though, I guess you could get a decent amount from algae if you build some nice large algae reactors to feed you.

I've thought about plankton. You ought to be able to make a pretty nourishing stew out of (the right varieties of) plankton.

Note well: I have no idea how restrictive a subset "the right varieties" is, nor how hard it is to obtain plankton that are only from that subset.

Most calories from plants come from plants that have already died. Corn, wheat, soybean, etc. Maybe stop eating greens if this bothers you. Nice firm lettuce is quite alive when you eat it.

A little off-topic, but since Atlas Obscura crops up here fairly often, I'd just like to say that their book's a very pleasant thing to own, if you're into coffee-table books at all. I bought it on a whim after seeing an ad on the site, and I'm quite enjoying picking through it in fits and starts. Nothing in it that isn't on the site as far as I'm aware, but sometimes a laptop just doesn't cut the mustard for leisure reading.

Seconded, it really is a nice, as you said, coffee table book. It's just really nice to pick up and read briefly while waiting for the wife to get ready or when you have moments of brief leisure.

Interestingly enough, a similar chromatin-based mechanism could be responsible for long term memories in animals. If that is the case, this could mean interesting times for, say, cryonics or even psychiatry.

If plants having memories is something that interests you, then you should also check out this recently (2017/05) published study:

Temperature variability is integrated by a spatially embedded decision-making center to break dormancy in Arabidopsis seeds

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704745114

In short, it shows a seed having binary decision-making areas that communicate with each other to determine the best outcome for survival.

From the paper:

"Both plants and animals make decisions in response to the environment to maximize their fitness. Plants use dormancy in seeds to move through time and space, and timing of the transition to germination is influenced by external cues, including temperature. Here, we report the presence of a decision-making center within the root tip of dormant seeds and demonstrate that it shares a similar configuration as some systems within the human brain. Unlike in humans, where this spatial structure is used to filter out noisy inputs from the environment, seeds use this arrangement to harness fluctuating temperatures and stimulate the termination of dormancy. Variable inputs therefore act as an instructive signal for seeds, enhancing the accuracy with which plants are established in ecosystems."

"Monica Gagliano began to study plant behavior because she was tired of killing animal"

Considering she still calls plants 'he' & dedicated her life to study them, I wonder what's her current perspective on the above statement. The article does mention abusing plants as part of the study, does this mean the scientists themselves feel it's less violent. Since it's proven that the plants react to stimulus, how do they convince themselves that they aren't hurting the plants.

That's really fascinating about the Mimosa pudica responding differently to being dropped after a while.

Interestingly along with Venus fly traps, their movement response can also be triggered with electricity.

Considering that it all boils down to ions moving to trigger various actions, it's not surprising that electricity could trigger it. That's a good way to get anything with muscles to move, too. :)

Heh, that's true.

As far as I know though, you can't force the venus fly trap or mimosa to open it's leaves again via electricity.

I think with the mimosa iirc, strong bright light can open it's leaves though.

Correct. Both of those actions occur due to the ion channels and gates resetting to their normal, pre-triggered state. In both of these plants their movements are triggered by ion potentials changing, like nerves in animals, opening channels to move water from one area to another, changing the shape of cells, bending cell walls due to water pressure, causing the movement. Then, slowly the water is moved back to its pre-trigger state, slowly opening the venus fly trap, or leaflets in this plant. Some insects move their legs through adjusting liquid pressure.

Thanks for the description, that makes a lot of sense.

I'll have to read up what light is doing wrt the Mimosa, as to how it opens the leaves.

I bought one recently, as well as closing it's leaves when you touch them, it seems to 'go to sleep', when it gets darker.

Edit:

https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/Plants_Mimosas

Is cool, measuring the action potential.

Those diagrams are fantastic. Great find!

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