A recent article published in La Repubblica revived the debate, confirming the thesis: are plants intelligent or not?

Can I make complex decisions? According to reports, there is a tree in the world that is even capable of aborting its seeds.

Trees make decisions

Trees are able to make complex decisions, move and communicate. The peasant tradition, Italian and not only, is full of magical and howling plants, such as the mandgragora, for example, to include the strangest carnivorous plants and fascinating mangroves, plants that adapt to various situations, this you know.

As reported in the newspaper, the discovery comes from a group of scientists from the Helmholtz Center who saw that the Berberis Vulgaris, also called barberry, homeopathic remedy, among others, is able to eliminate its own seeds in order to prevent pest infestation .

This is the first real proof of complex plant behavior. The article was published in the American Naturalist magazine.

Plants can also create music

Do men come from plants?

But have we never known that trees are strong beings, that they transmit and send something back to us? Beings to be respected, from the roots to the bark, with multiform leaves of a thousand varieties of color: simply by observing them we feel drunk with their extraordinary beauty.

Literature is full of references to the value and the greatness of plants : from Jean Giono, with "The man who planted trees", to the "racine du marronier" thanks to which Sartre started a profound reflection on existence and on what there is of contingent, up to go to the various religious and historical symbologies: from the laurel to the nard, as Alfredo Cattabiani beautifully illustrated in his "Floriario", reporting the words of Mircea Eliade : " The Cosmos is symbolized by a tree ; the divinity manifests itself as dendromorfa: fecundity, opulence, fortune, health are concentrated in the herbs and trees.The human race derives from a plant species, human life takes refuge in plant forms when it is interrupted with malice ( ...) the cosmos represented in the form of a Tree, because the tree is regenerated periodically. Spring is a resurrection of universal life and consequently of human life ".

And from India of Eliade, where the trees have life, they carry tilaka or red bindi ("red drop" the red dots that normally represent the energy of the third eye and indicate that a woman is married) to India by Tiziano Terzani, that puts his eyes to the tree to make his grandson understand that they too have life, even if apparently they don't move.

And let's not forget the most recent "The Memory of the Trees" by Bernardo Notargiacomo : at the age of ten, the little protagonist senses that he has a priceless gift, or the ability to understand the secret language of plants, which coincides with the start of an incredible adventure, made of unique discoveries, extraordinary encounters, unforgettable emotions of a parallel world full of mystery and beauty.

Do you know ecopsychology? Find out what is in the interview with Marcella Danon

The word to science

And not only of big trees do we talk. As Stefano Mancuso said, one of the founders of plant neurobiology, in an interview conducted by Fabio Fazio, beans and sunflowers also move for specific reasons, from seeking support to communicating to manifest typical relationships in social life, and do not randomly.

As Darwin had guessed, and as the scholar reports, the "command center" of plants resides in the root apex, or the tip of the root. In 1870 Darwin wrote "The power of plant movement", in which he said that in the root apex there is a kind of brain, similar to the animal.

Almost a century later, "The Intelligence of Flowers" by Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright and essayist, brings attention not only to the colors and scents of flowers and plants, but also to the ingenuity of their survival strategies: " The plant concentrates all its existence towards a single purpose: to emerge from the ground to escape the underground calamity ; to evade and transgress a mysterious and oppressive law, to free oneself, to tear oneself from the suffocating grip, to imagine or invoke wings to escape as far as possible, to free oneself from a space in which destiny has relegated it and to approach another reality part of an exciting and vivid world ”.

And the question, full of charm and mystery, remains once again outstanding: can there be intelligence without a real brain?

In the video below, the intervention at TED by Stafano Mancuso: