Plant intelligence dux: a comprehensive rebuttal of Kingsland and Taiz

Intelligent behaviour is a fundamental capability for all life that exists in the wilderness. Assessments of plant capabilities made solely from laboratory exercises that make plants behave as though they are dogs trained to jump through hoops mislead as to the real complexity of plant behaviour. Consequently, plants can be wrongly described as simple. This is accompanied by further simplistic assumptions that reductionism will explain all. It will not! In wilderness, any individual faces a bewildering array of environmental variation not only in the shoot but from the highly variable nature of the soil that any seed lands on and must accommodate. There is a need for experimental plant scientists to finally eschew the convenience of the laboratory and investigate real plants in real environments.

My aim in introducing plants as intelligent organisms was to improve the public status of plants and that has now occurred. “Are plants intelligent? Of course they are” Castiello (2023). Research on climbing plants easily reveals their intelligent capabilities, and there are some six papers from this group around Castiello (Padua University) in the reference section of this paper that indicate this to be the case. The start here was of course Darwin’s (1882) recognition that climbing plants could recognise the thickness of a potential support and make a decision on whether to use it or not. Intelligent? Of course it is; the probability of survival has increased.