June 6, 2024 • 47 mins
Vision without eyes? Intelligence without a brain? Are plants more akin to us than we have been prepared to acknowledge? Or are they different in ways we will forever strain to imagine? One way or another, a vine with some unusual abilities is shaking the field of botany to its foundations.
On this episode: Zoë Schlanger (author of the newly-released, New York Times bestselling book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth) takes us to the misty rainforests of Chile and back to report on what might just be the world’s most extraordinary plant — hidden in plain sight.
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With music by Modern Biology, Mort Garson, Hotspring, Thumbug, and Sunfish Moon Light.
For credits, citations, transcript, and more, visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-10-everything-will-be-vine
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Introduction Voiceover (00:02):
You are listening to Season Five of
Future Ecologies
Mendel Skulski (00:10):
Okay, here we go.
Adam Huggins (00:12):
You know the drill.
Mendel Skulski (00:13):
Mendel,
Adam Huggins (00:13):
Adam,
Mendel Skulski (00:14):
Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins (00:15):
and this is the last episode of our fifth
season.
Mendel Skulski (00:19):
Thanks for coming with us!
Adam Huggins (00:20):
And don't worry, we will be back soon. In the
meantime, we're going to bekeeping the podcast feed warm
and cozy over the summer with afew extra treats for your ears.
Today, we've got somethingreally special. Because it's a
story about plants.
Mendel Skulski (00:37):
It's more of a mystery about plants. Because
despite our budding interest,our story today reveals that
many leaves remain unturned.
Adam Huggins (00:46):
The story comes to us from journalist and friend of
the show, Zoe Schlanger, theauthor of the newly released,
New York Times best-sellingbook, The Light Eaters — How the
Unseen World of PlantIntelligence Offers a New
Understanding of Life on Earth.
Mendel Skulski (01:03):
Zoë took one of our recorders to the jungles of
Chile and back to report on whatmight just be the world's most
ordinary, extraordinary plant.We'll let her take it from here.
So, without further ado, this isEverything Will Be Vine.
Introduction Voiceover (01:23):
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and
asserted territories of theMusqueam, Squamish, and
Tsleil-Waututh, this is FutureEcologies – exploring the shape
of our world through ecology,design, and sound.
Zoë Schlanger (02:08):
Journalists in my line of work tend to be focused
on death. Or the harbingers ofit — disease, disaster, decline.
That is how climate journalistsmark time as the earth passes
benchmark after grim benchmarkon its way into the foreseen
crisis. There’s only so much ofthis that one person can take.
(02:31):
Or perhaps my tolerance was thinand easily worn out after years
of focus on droughts and floods.In recent years I’d begun to
feel numb and empty. I neededsome of the opposite.
What, I wondered, is theopposite of death? Creation,
perhaps. A sense of becomingsinstead of endings. Plants are
(02:55):
that, given as they are tocontinuous growth. They’d
soothed me all my life, longbefore studies came out
confirming what we already knew— that time spent among plants
can ease the mind better than along sleep. Living in a dense
city, I’d walked in the parkunder a canopy of yews and elms
(03:16):
when I needed to clear my head;I’d spent long minutes gazing at
the new leaves forming on mypotted philodendrons when my
nerves were fried. Plants arethe very definition of creative
becoming — they are in constantmotion, albeit slow motion,
probing the air and soil in arelentless quest for a livable
(03:37):
future.
A life spent constantly growingyet rooted in a single spot
comes with tremendouschallenges. To meet them, plants
have come up with some of themost creative methods for
survival of any living thing, usincluded. Many are so ingenious
(03:57):
that they seem nearly impossiblefor an order of life we’ve
mostly relegated to the marginsof our own lives, the decoration
that frames the theatrics ofbeing an animal. Yet there they
are all the same, theseunbelievable abilities of
plants, defying our anaemicexpectations. Through
(04:17):
conversations with scientistsaround the world I would learn
that their way of life is soastonishing, that no one really
knows the limits of what a plantcan do. In fact, it seemed that
no one quite knows what a plantreally is.
This is, of course, a problemfor the scientific field of
botany. Or it’s the mostexciting thing to happen to it
(04:39):
in a generation, depending onhow comfortable you feel with
seismic shifts in what you oncethought to be true. As I looked
deeper, I would find ascientific field eating itself
alive with contradictions —points of contention multiplying
as fast as the mysteries. Butsomething in me was attracted to
this lack of neat answers. Whodoesn’t feel both drawn to and
(05:03):
repulsed by the unknown?
In the 19th century, naturalistAlexander Von Humboldt wondered
aloud why being outdoors evokedsomething existential and true.
“Nature everywhere speaks to manin a voice that is familiar to
(05:23):
his soul,” he wrote; “Everythingis interaction and reciprocal,”
and therefore nature “gives theimpression of the whole.”
Humboldt went on to introducethe European intellectual world
to the concept of the planet asa living whole, with climatic
systems and interlockingbiological and geological
(05:44):
patterns bound up as a“net-like, intricate fabric.”
This was Western science’searliest glimmer of ecological
thinking, where the naturalworld became a series of biotic
communities, each acting uponthe others.
The question that I found miredin controversy was whether
(06:06):
plants could be consideredintelligent — and, for an even
bolder minority, whether theycould be considered conscious
and communicative. For all oftheir amazing, adaptive
behaviour, were they sensateagents? Or, were they each
simply acting out apredetermined genetic script?
(06:27):
Although I had come to thiscorner of the scientific world
at an exciting time, thesequestions were anything but new.
At the turn of the 20th Century,Jagadish Chandra Bose, a
physicist-turned-biologist inKolkata, India, had begun to
experiment and measure theelectrical responses of plants,
and became convinced that theyshared a functional similarity
(06:50):
to those in animal tissues.
JC Bose biopic (06:52):
1901, the Royal Institution, London. He gave a
lecture demonstration of hislatest experiment.
The Secret Life of Plants (07:00):
Touching the leaves of Mimosa pudica with
a cotton soaked in ether, Bosedemonstrates the fainting
response in a plant.
The Bose experiments were deniedpublication by the Royal
Society. By daring to suggestthat electrical responses are
present in plants, he hadoffended the learned members.
Zoë Schlanger (07:19):
Despite inventing instruments of unprecedented
precision across severaldisciplines, Bose would be
expunged from the scientificcanon for his fringe beliefs — a
fate not shared by AlexanderGraham Bell, who was driven to
invent the telephone in hopes ofcommunicating with the dead; or
Thomas Edison, whose experimentsranged into telekinesis and
(07:42):
telepathy. Dark-skinned andIndian, however, Bose and his
ideas were denied a place inWestern textbooks for nearly a
century.
Popular books were a differentstory. In 1973, the publication
of The Secret Life of Plantstook the world by storm. 5 years
later, a film by the same name,with a soundtrack by Stevie
(08:05):
Wonder.
Unknown (08:06):
Plants have been wired into a complex computer. The
change of mood as they react tothe crowds of visitors will be
converted into musicalexpression. As the people move
among the plants, the soundsthey hear are the plants
reacting to their presence. Anephemeral exchange of energy
(08:30):
linking to diverse life forms,becomes a symphony of emotions.
Zoë Schlanger (08:37):
At the dawn of New Age culture, the world was
ready to inhale ideas about howplants were just as alive as we
are. It was an immediate andmeteoric success, offering an
elysian new way to attend to theliving earth.
Unknown (08:51):
In some mysterious way, the plant which is attached to
the instrument is able to feelthe mutilation of its comrade.
Zoë Schlanger (08:59):
The Secret Life of Plants was a glimpse at a
society on the verge of directcommunication with its leafy
brethren. It would inspirethousands of hours of one-sided
conversations, and some veryworn-out cassettes of Wolfgang
Amadeus Motzart.
And it would turn out to be abeautiful collection of myths.
The Kirlian Witness (09:19):
During intensive periods of meditation
with plants, I learned tochannel my energies and enter
new states of being. Afterspending many hours in deep
concentration, I am able totranscend my physical boundaries
and allow my own spirit tocommune with the spirit of my
(09:42):
plant.
Zoë Schlanger (09:44):
Many scientists would try and fail to reproduce
the tantalising “research” thebook presented, eventually
deemed “fallacious andunprovable”. According to
botanists working at the time,the damage that Secret Life
caused to the field cannot beoverstated. The twin gatekeepers
(10:05):
of science — funding boards andpeer review boards — closed the
doors to any proposals with awhiff of plant “behaviour”.
Over the last 15 years, thattide has finally begun to turn,
with a gentle swell in bothresearch funding and academic
publications. The march oftechnology, genetic sequencing
(10:29):
and advanced microscopes, hasmade it possible to come to
previously outlandishconclusions with real rigour.
But, still sensitive to thefallout from the Secret Life,
and due to the squishy, nebulousimplications of the word, most
scientific authors don’t useterms like “intelligence” to
describe what they find.Nonetheless, their results
(10:52):
suggested that plants were muchmore sophisticated than anyone
had dared think.
From the nerve-like actionpotentials first observed by
Bose, to capabilities of memory,hearing, recognition of kin, and
incredible interactions withinsects, the papers probing
remarkable plant behaviours aregrowing from a trickle to a
(11:15):
fairly robust stream.
One such paper caught myattention. It documented a vine
doing something that should havebeen impossible — a magic trick
that few animals have mastered,and that no accepted plant
mechanism could explain.
So, in April 2022, I flew duesouth for 13 hours — first from
(11:39):
New York City to Santiago, andfrom there to Puerto Montt.
Then, after driving for another2 hours, past seemingly endless
fields of potatoes bordered byrivers and lakes, I arrived into
the Valdivian temperaterainforests of southern Chile.
Not unlike parts of the PacificNorthwest, the climate was cool
and misty, and every availablespace was absolutely brimming
(12:04):
with plant life. The constantsights of green and sounds of
rain blanketed my senses in avibrant static hum. In 2014, a
Peruvian ecologist named ErnestoGianoli had discovered that a
vine, common to theserainforests, was able to mimic
(12:25):
the shape of almost any plant itgrew beside... a botanical
chameleon.
Ernesto Gianoli (12:33):
[Spanish]
Zoë Schlanger (12:34):
I'm not finding what I'm looking for. It seems
like they may have cut them.
Ernesto Gianoli (12:43):
[Spanish]
Zoë Schlanger (12:44):
I thought they were right here.
Unfortunately, the suddennotoriety had made this little
vine a target for poachers. It'sappropriate then that it has a
particular talent forcamouflage.
Ernesto Gianoli (12:58):
But here I found...
Zoë Schlanger (13:02):
Oh, wow it's so tiny.
Ernesto Gianoli (13:03):
This is Boquila, yeah it’s so tiny, This
is Boquila and this isRhaphithamnus. At first glance
you’d say it’s the same. Quitedifficult to tell who's who.
Zoë Schlanger (13:13):
This is Ernesto Gianoli himself. And in his
hands, Boquila trifoliolata — aslender, climbing vine, with
leaves in clusters of three.Here, one strand of Boquila was
winding its way up a tree,Rhaphithamnus spinosus. On the
part of the vine climbing thetree, its leaves had
transformed (13:33):
now a dark glossy green, shrunk to a fraction of
their original size, and taperedto a point. And this was just
one example of Boquila’smimicry. Ernesto and his
colleagues have found Boquilamodelling itself on more than 20
species, and counting!
Ernesto Gianoli (13:52):
So far, what we knew about mimicry was a one to
one relationship. This species Amimics this species B. But then,
comes along Boquila and says no,I can mimic very different
species.
Zoë Schlanger (14:08):
In the world of plants, mimicry is otherwise
quite limited — shaped byspecial circumstances of
coevolution. Like in the case ofrye, once culled as an unwanted
weed by early farmers. It waseffectively selected to blend in
so well with the fields of wheatthat it became a cereal in its
own right. Or certain types ofmistletoe, which are each
(14:31):
obliged to parasitize aparticular host plant, tapping
directly into its vascularsystem. The leaves of Australian
she-oak mistletoe are strikinglysimilar to Australian she-oak,
likewise the leaves ofeucalyptus mistletoe resemble
those of eucalyptus. Evolutionhas sculpted these plants to
blend in with their specificsurroundings, but on an animal
(14:53):
timescale their appearance isfixed. Not so, with Boquila.
Ernesto Gianoli (14:59):
The same individual can mimic two
different species.
Zoë Schlanger (15:04):
Boquila’s mimicry is spontaneous and flexible. A
single vine may climb acrossseveral different plants and
change its leaves accordingly.
Ernesto Gianoli (15:13):
I mean, in terms of size, one to ten ratio.
And in terms of shape, andcolor, vein patterns — a broad
array of traits. What ismimicry? Similar colours, maybe
similar shapes. But this goesbeyond that.
Zoë Schlanger (15:33):
What’s more, direct contact is unnecessary
for Boquila to model itselfafter another plant. It may
simply be growing nearby.
Whoa. That's huge.
Ernesto Gianoli (15:43):
Yeah it's huge. And also this, as I told, this
wavy...
Zoë Schlanger (15:48):
Uh huh. The wavy edge.
Ernesto Gianoli (15:51):
Yeah wavy edge.
Zoë Schlanger (15:52):
Wow. That's unbelievable. I mean, that's
like, what 15, 16 times the sizeover there?
Ernesto Gianoli (16:00):
Yes, exactly. Here, small Boquilas. But starts
growing larger and larger. Notall the plants, of course — not
all the leaves, of course.
Zoë Schlanger (16:09):
So if you were an herbivore, your first impression
would be...?
Ernesto Gianoli (16:15):
That it's another species.
Zoë Schlanger (16:16):
Yeah. Wait, is this Boquila?
Ernesto Gianoli (16:18):
Yes.
Zoë Schlanger (16:20):
It's even got the yellowing.
Ernesto Gianoli (16:22):
And if we look carefully around there are five
more.
Zoë Schlanger (16:29):
We are in a spot totally surrounded by Boquila on
all sides. It's sort of a glenof Boquila. There's maybe 10 or
15 other species of plants, allgrowing up as thick bushes, and
the Boquila is twining aroundall of them. And on almost every
single one I'm walking by, youhave to look very closely. But
(16:54):
the Boquila has shifted itsshape. In some areas of its
vines to match. Most of thesespecies, in some places, the
leaf is almost the size of myhand to match long, large leaves
of one species and 10 metersaway, it's smaller than my pinky
(17:16):
nail to match a species withvery small, dark, glossy leaves
that have a strong vein down themiddle and the Boquila matches
that vein and that glossperfectly too. It's just
astounding. And the longer Ispend staring at an area the
more Boquila appear, but ittakes a while so if I was an
(17:40):
herbivore, I for sure would betricked. If I was a deer walking
through here, I just can'timagine if they're visually
guided how they’d distinguishbetween these plants.
And not all of these modelplants are endemic to this
rainforest. Ernesto showed me itnext to a plant, creeping
(18:03):
buttercup, that had onlyrecently been introduced,
sometime in the last 20 years.Here, Boquila’s duplication was
strikingly partial andimperfect. It almost felt like
witnessing a young artistpractising their still-life
sketches — actively refiningtheir skill in rendering the
world.
Every time Ernesto goes out intothe field to study Boquila, he
(18:27):
and his colleagues discover itmodelling itself on yet another
species. I was present for theaddition of two plants to this
ever-growing list. First, aspecies of maidenhair fern, so
far the only documented instanceof Boquila mimicking a fern,
which I found myself. Andsecond, an overstory tree known
as Notro.
Ernesto Gianoli (18:47):
This is the first record of Boquila doing
something with Notro. This shapeof elongated leaves is quite
rare to observe in Boquila.
Zoë Schlanger (18:58):
Still riding high off of my own small
contribution, I asked Ernestowhat it felt like to be the
first one to notice Boquila’smagic trick.
Ernesto Gianoli (19:08):
What is the dream of a kid who likes
science? To make a discovery,right? A dinosaur bone or
whatever. It was close tothat... Close to that dream of
the kid. But still, for it to bereally fulfilled, I need to see
(19:28):
the mechanism elucidated.
Zoë Schlanger (19:30):
And in the hopes of elucidating the mysterious
mechanism of Boquila, twocompeting hypotheses have been
proposed — both of themrevolutionary to plant science.
Ernesto Gianoli (19:41):
To crack the code of Boquila immediately will
lead us to crack a general codeof plants. They go hand by hand,
I mean. Understanding Boquilawill imply understanding plants.
That’s my feeling.
Zoë Schlanger (20:04):
The first proposal comes from František
Baluška, founding member of theSociety for Plant Neurobiology,
later conservatively renamed theSociety for Plant Signalling and
Behavior. František is acontroversial figure. Unlike
most of his peers, he is a loudand proud champion of plant
(20:24):
intelligence — in fact, heevangalizes the subjective
consciousness of all cellularlife.
His hypothesis is as surprisingas it is concise. He believes
that plants can see.
František Baluška (20:40):
Vision in plants is controversial, but it
is strange that it is. Becauseplants evolved from algae and
algae have vision. So, if algaehave vision, why should plants
lose this very useful ability?So, I am surprised that people
are surprised that the plantshould see, because if the algae
see why not plants?
Zoë Schlanger (21:02):
The suggestion that plants have a sense of
sight goes back to 1905, whenthe German scientist Gottlieb
Haberlandt described howstructures on the surface of
leaves could function as simpleoptics, affording plants
thousands or even millions oftiny eyes.
František Baluška (21:18):
Of course, vision in plants is not like our
humans vision. You know, theydon't have an eye like we. They
have cells on the epidermis,these cells will act as a lens
and will transmit any object youwill expose to these cells on
the other side. This wasexperimentally shown but
ignored.
Zoë Schlanger (21:40):
Haberlandt’s theory would go on to fascinate
Charles Darwin’s son, Francis,but ultimately it was forgotten.
How could a plant, apparentlywithout a nervous system or
anything we recognize as abrain, resolve an image?
František Baluška (21:54):
Everything is projected on the next layer. And
how the cells in the next layerare processing the images and
sending messages further in theplant, no one knows.
Zoë Schlanger (22:04):
Since Haberlandt, plants have been revealed to
have more kinds ofphotoreceptors on their surface
than are found in the human eye.There should be no surprise that
light matters to plants. Lightis literally matter, to plants.
As any sighted person knows, thequalities of light convey a
wealth of useful information.Still, it’s a big claim to say
(22:27):
that plants are not just weatherstations, but telescopes.
Unknown (22:32):
Of course, this could be studied, but first, the
science must acknowledge thisability and then the agencies
which give money for researchshould be willing to give money
for future research, but upuntil now, nothing happens, you
know, all what is done now isjust our hobby.
Zoë Schlanger (22:49):
František points to new research on several close
evolutionary cousins of plants.A model cyanobacteria with an
eyespot that can sense a light’sdirection and move towards it.
Next, a dinoflagellate thatbuilds a structure that
stunningly resembles a lens andretina — a chimeric assemblage
of plastids and mitochondria, noless. And, of course, he points
(23:13):
to Boquila.
Unknown (23:14):
There is no way how we would explain this without some
kind of vision.
Zoë Schlanger (23:19):
So, as outlandish as it may sound at first, a kind
of plant “vision” is notentirely out of the question,
and is one of the fewexplanations that has been
offered to make sense ofBoquila. But Ernesto is not
convinced that vision is themechanism behind this unassuming
vine’s abilities.
Ernesto Gianoli (23:38):
Plants don't need to see in order to do great
things. How can texture, how canthickness be told from an image?
And don't forget that there aresome features that are hidden.
Zoë Schlanger (23:56):
Case in point, the very first plant I saw
Boquila copy with my own eyes —Rhaphithamnus spinosus. This
tree’s leaves curl over at theend, creating a spiny tip or
spike. Likewise, in its mimicry,so does Boquila. But looking
down from above, thisdistinguishing feature of
(24:16):
Raphitamnus is simply notvisible.
Ernesto Gianoli (24:20):
You have to feel! You have to put your
finger on the underside of theleaf. How this is able to see
the underside of a leaf whenthey are placed in a particular
direction that cannot make thispossible?
Zoë Schlanger (24:35):
Could it be that Boquila was truly covered in
eyelike organs, and was somehowable to integrate this
information across differentparts of its body — carefully
observing the Rhaphithamnus fromall angles? Or was it a hole in
the plant-vision theory?
Ernesto Gianoli (24:52):
I think this is too much of an anthropocentric
view of the phenomenon.
Zoë Schlanger (24:57):
As we strain to understand how Boquila can
accomplish the seeminglyimpossible, itself just one
example from a wave ofnewly-discovered plant
capabilities, the charge of“anthropomorphism” looms heavy
in the minds of many scientists.The risk of discussing plant
sensation, perception, orcognition is that such language
(25:19):
is inescapably tied to oursensation, perception, and
cognition; that habituation withour animal faculties biases us
to interpret plants on familiar,human terms, rather than on
their own.
František Baluška (25:34):
Most people are not very happy with these
words like "pain", "cognition",and "intelligence", and
"vision", and "hearing". So theythink this is forbidden for
plants, somehow. When you do ascience, you should start with a
simple system and then to go tothe more complex. And we would
not have this problem withanthropomorphism if we would
(25:55):
start our sciences withbacteria, then algae, protozoa,
protists, and then some plants —lower plants, higher plants —
animals, and then humans at theend. You all the time are blamed
by some kind ofanthropomorphism, if you find
something similar to humans, youknow. Of course, we are in
evolution connected. And noweverything — every this term —
(26:17):
is loaded with human activities.So if you say sleep, pain,
cognition, anything, they sayyou try to humanize plants. We
try to convince them that we say"plant cognition". It is not a
human cognition. It is aplant-specific cognition.
Zoë Schlanger (26:35):
Intelligence is a loaded word, perhaps overly
connected to our ideas ofacademic achievement. It’s been
weaponized against fellow humansfor millennia, used to divide
people into hierarchies of worthand power. Yet it is, by its
very definition, still a wordthat contains the germ of what
(26:57):
we mean by alert, awake to theworld, spontaneous, responsive,
decision-making. From the Latininterlegere — to discern, to
choose between.
So do plants see? Or does anassumed primacy of vision render
plants as lesser animals —diminishing these green bodies,
(27:20):
and leaving no room for therecognition that they may deploy
means that far exceed the human.
Ernesto Gianoli (27:28):
It's very human in nature, to try to put plants
within the frameworks that weare comfortable to deal with.
But sorry, plans are different.So, prepare. Prepare to be
challenged. Prepare to be provenwrong.
Mendel Skulski (27:50):
When we come back, Ernesto has his own theory
to explain this remarkable plantplasticity.
Adam Huggins (27:57):
Plastic plants?!
Mendel Skulski (27:58):
Those too... after the break.
Zoë Schlanger (28:23):
For all the times he has seen Boquila
trifoliolata, Ernesto hadnoticed something. Its mimicry
is rarely total. Instead, it’spatchy. Some Boquila just look
like… Boquila, even on a vineclimbing a tree. This patchiness
reminded him of the stochasticlook of leaf spots and wilts and
(28:44):
mottling. That is, it remindedhim of the infection patterns of
bacteria and viruses.
Over the past few decades,another biological revolution
has been unfolding. A newappreciation for the so-called
“microbiome” — the communitiesof single-celled organisms
living in and on everythingelse. Famously, in any given
(29:07):
person, there are about as manynon-human cells than there are
human cells. No longer aremicrobes considered to be
exclusively vectors of diseaseand decay, but are now also
recognized as essentialcollaborators in digestion,
mood, and ultimately health. Andhumanity is not unique in this
regard. Effectively all animals,like termites, fundamentally
(29:32):
rely on their microbiome.
To most people, the essence of atermite is its ability to digest
wood. Research has shown thatthis ability is conferred not by
the genes of the termite, but bybacteria living within them.
Correspondingly, those bacteriarely on other, smaller bacteria
(29:53):
living within them. This is thedizzyingly nested perspective
that pioneering evolutionarybiologist Lynn Margulis first
popularized as the “holobiont”.She defined the holobiont as a
composite organism made of manyorganisms working in concert. It
includes the microbiome, butalso the macrobiome — the larger
(30:16):
beings in which and upon whichthe microbiomes live.
Margulis proposed that complexmulticellular life first came
into being when microbes ofdifferent abilities teamed up,
eventually fusing into oneentity, most notably
incorporating mitochondria andchloroplasts. She believed that
these sorts of intercellularsymbioses may have been more
(30:38):
important to our evolutionaryhistory than the slow, random
mutation science believed to bethe source of all evolutionary
change.
Ernesto Gianoli (30:46):
Don't forget that once the mitochondria was a
bacteria. It was kind of aparasite that was welcomed by
the cell, saying "Okay, you willmake energy and I will give you
a home." And that work very wellso far.
Zoë Schlanger (31:10):
Although initially ignored and ridiculed,
her theory of endosymbiosis isnow widely accepted as fact.
“The completely self-contained‘individual’ is a myth that
needs to be replaced with a moreflexible description,” Margulis
wrote, with her son DorianSagan, “Each of us is a sort of
(31:30):
loose committee.”
This state of nature is one ofinterpenetration and mingling
that defies easy categorization.It occupies a middle place, both
in the material reality of theworld and in our understanding
of it. To Báyò Akómoláfé, aYoruba poet and philosopher,
(31:56):
this middle “is not halfwaybetween two poles; it is
porousness that mocks the veryidea of separation.” He
describes our collectivebiological reality as a state of
“brilliant between-ness” that“defeats everything, corrodes
every boundary, spills throughmarked territory, and crosses
(32:16):
out every confident line.”
What if, Ernesto wondered, thiswas the key to Boquila? What if
its flexible appearance was anexpression of a flexible
holobiome? He conceived anexperiment.
Ernesto Gianoli (32:33):
It is very important to understand the
experimental design. There'sthis Boquila plant mimicking
other plants. So we'll focus onone particular interaction —
Boquila and this tree calledRhaphithamnus. So Boquila and
the tree. We spotted this treewith Boquila growing onto it.
(32:55):
And specifically, we took leavesof Boquila doing the trick, I
mean, leaves of Boquilaresembling leaves of the tree.
And — this is very important —leaves from the same individual
Boquila that we're not mimickingthe tree leaves. So we have
(33:15):
these triplet. Leaves of thetree, Boquila doing the trick,
and Boquila being just thestandard Boquila.
Zoë Schlanger (33:24):
Each pair of Boquila leaves, both mimicking
and non-mimicking, were pickedfrom the same vine, and the same
distance from the tree. Theygathered these three sets of
leaves from 5 sites, and broughtthem all back to the lab.
Ernesto Gianoli (33:38):
We analyzed the communities of leaf endophytic
bacteria,
Zoë Schlanger (33:45):
Leaf endophytes are the microbiome of the leaf.
The bacteria living within itstissues.
Ernesto Gianoli (33:50):
There is not one species of bacteria, there's
hundreds.
Zoë Schlanger (33:54):
Ernesto’s hypothesis was that if the
microbiome played some part inBoquila’s abilities, then the
community of bacteria in themimic leaf should resemble that
of the tree, and differsignificantly from the
non-mimic.
Ernesto Gianoli (34:09):
And that's exactly what the results showed.
Zoë Schlanger (34:12):
The leaves that successfully mimicked the
Rhaphithamnus shared 255distinct species of endophytes —
more than triple those shared bythe non-mimicking leaves.
Ernesto Gianoli (34:24):
I think this is strong evidence of the
involvement — I cannot say morethan that — the involvement
somewhat of bacteria in thisphenomenon of leaf mimicry. One
possibility, I think, is that ina way, these microbes partially
control for instance, leafshape, and this opens the avenue
(34:49):
for research on this directionof genetic control, epigenetic
control by bacteria and so on.
Zoë Schlanger (34:57):
Ernesto is hinting at something with
profound implications. Hesuspects that bacteria and
viruses exert influence on theshape of all plants — perhaps by
ferrying genes and RNA directly,or perhaps by selectively
activating or silencingpre-existing parts of the plant
(35:18):
genome.
Ernesto Gianoli (35:19):
What literature tells us is that microbes are
able to modify gene expressionof other organisms. This can be
airborne, like a bath ofmicrobes, cloud of microbe,
whatever you prefer.
Zoë Schlanger (35:40):
The holobiome makes it difficult to delineate
where one organism ends andanother begins, metaphorically,
but also very literally. Whatlives inside also often lives on
and around. Each of uscreatures, like Pigpen from the
Peanuts, a blurry cloud ofactivity; a burst of flavour in
(36:00):
the atmospheric soup.
Ernesto Gianoli (36:03):
And then we are forced to conceive that all
plants are constantly exposed tothis process.
Zoë Schlanger (36:12):
But why then just Boquila? Why aren’t all plants,
or animals too for that matter,integrating each other’s
features on contact? Well, wecan’t know for sure that they
don’t — at least on some subtlelevel. Boquila itself was
described by Western botany in1782, and it took us more than
(36:35):
200 years to notice it could dothis. Could there be other
mimics all over the world,hiding in plain sight?
Or is Boquila simply unique, andparticularly porous? Maybe most
plants only speak in theholobiome code of their own
species, while Boquila crackedsome universal cypher —
(36:57):
permitting its appearance to beoverwritten by its neighbours,
for its own adaptive advantage.
In the first paper everpublished on Boquila’s mimicry,
Ernesto and his colleaguesmeasured how copying the leaves
of its surroundings correlatedwith less herbivory. From this
view, Boquila’s talents could bethe undirected outcome of
natural selection — agency andintelligence not required.
(37:28):
One experiment poses a threat toErnesto’s microbial hypothesis.
In 2021, a study was publishedclaiming to demonstrate Boquila
growing on, and mimicking, aplastic plant. Of course, such a
synthetic model has no holobiometo offer, and the authors
claimed it as a strong supportfor plant vision.
(37:50):
However, this paper was met withcriticism. Ernesto felt that the
experimental controls were veryweak, and took issue with the
analysis. The study was acollaboration between an
unaffiliated independentresearcher — an amateur
scientist — along with a studentof František Baluška. František
himself is editor-in-chief ofthe journal in which the paper
(38:14):
was published, drawingcomplaints of an undeclared
conflict of interest.
But all the negative attentionhasn’t discouraged František and
his student, Felipe Yamashita,from looking further. František
reports that they haveyet-unpublished data detailing
how Boquila is capable ofmimicking nothing more than a
photograph of a leaf.
František Baluška (38:35):
Yes, because we have no data that the Boquila
is mimicking, not only a plastichouseplant, which is published,
but we have now data that it ismimicking even pictures. So, if
you provide the Boquila with thepictures of leaves, different
kinds of plants, then theBoquila start within two, three
days, making some mimicking ofthese pictures.
Zoë Schlanger (38:56):
Ironically, František and Ernesto have a
very similar intuition about whythe other’s hypothesis is wrong.
That is, the sheer breadth ofBoquila’s ability to emulate.
František Baluška (39:08):
Because the Boquila is mimicking many
physical parameters, it ismimicking the shapes, color,
texture, size and so on. So, itis not easy to transmit such
information by some kinds ofbacteria. And even if there are
some different bacteria onmimicking leaves like on the
non-mimicking, it is not anyevidence that the bacteria are
(39:30):
having something to do with themimicking. For me, this story is
really not able to explaineverything. I think it is only
possible with some kind of thevision
Ernesto Gianoli (39:43):
I would say very lightly, "Show me the
pictures." Because there are nopictures in that paper. If
Boquila is mimicking plasticplants, this is very easy. Take
a picture and show it to us, asI've done in every paper or
article I have written.
I am a scientist. I want tounderstand. I don't want to be
(40:05):
proven right. I don't want to befamous. I want to understand.
Hopefully be able to see thesolution of this mystery within
my lifetime.
Zoë Schlanger (40:21):
One of the strangest things about Boquila
isn’t the plant itself, it’s thenear total lack of research
attention. To the few scientistsattempting to tease out its
mysteries, even Ernesto, itremains a side project.
This may partly be lingeringskepticism or trepidation from
within the scientific community,but it’s also partly practical.
(40:44):
Boquila is just not easy to workwith, compared to typical
laboratory plants — so called“model organisms”. So far, it
has been challenging to growfrom cuttings in a greenhouse,
although František says they aremaking good progress. Still, the
patchiness of its mimicrychallenges traditional
statistical methods.
(41:09):
For the time being, Ernesto andFrantišek may disagree on the
most promising mechanism toexplain Boquila. But they share
at least one thing (41:17):
an admiration for the 20th century
philosopher Karl Popper.
Popper is widely held to be afather of the modern scientific
method and its premise offalsification. Briefly, he put
forward the idea that scientifictheories are never really proven
to be true, they may only befalsified — or in other words,
(41:40):
disproven. According to Popper,science does not sit upon a
bedrock foundation of truth.Instead, the great scaffolding
of all scientific theory issupported only by pilings in
swampy ground. To quote Popper,"the piles are driven down from
above into the swamp, but notdown to any natural or given
(42:02):
base. And if we stop driving thepiles deeper, it is not because
we have reached firm ground. Wesimply stop when we are
satisfied that the piles arefirm enough to carry the
structure, at least for the timebeing."
So we will always have morequestions than answers. Are
(42:26):
plants more akin to us than wehave been prepared to admit? Or
are they different in ways wewill forever strain to imagine?
Can we call them cunning intheir own right? Or will such
language always be too human?
We share our planet with and oweour lives to a form of life at
(42:50):
once alien and familiar. On whatbasis do we owe them our respect
and appreciation? In the wordsof ethnobotanist Timothy Plowman
"They can eat light. Isn't thatenough?"
The more we learn about plants,the more their complexities seem
(43:11):
to multiply. The swamp, it turnsout is full of life.
Adam Huggins (43:30):
Zoë Schlanger is the author of “The Light Eaters:
How the Unseen World of PlantIntelligence Offers a New
Understanding of Life on Earth”.
Mendel Skulski (43:40):
And in which the story of Boquila is just one
chapter. “The Light Eaters” isavailable now, wherever you get
books.
Adam Huggins (43:48):
This episode of Future Ecologies was produced by
Mendel Skulski, and me, AdamHuggin
Mendel Skulski (43:54):
With music by Modern Biology, Mort Garson,
Hotspring, Thumbug, and SunfishMoon Light
Adam Huggins (44:03):
Cover art by Ali Silva
Mendel Skulski (44:05):
And with special thanks to Fiona Glen, Gianni
Fontana, and Eden Zinchik.
Adam Huggins (44:11):
Thanks also to our patrons. Future Ecologies is a
sort of loose committee — aholobiome with each and every
one of you. We would not existwithout your continuous support,
inoculating us against a hostilemedia economy, inspiring us with
horizontally transferred memes,and most of all, helping us grow
(44:33):
— slowly and steadily, upwardstowards the light.
Mendel Skulski (44:36):
We’re proud to be an independent podcast — with
Adam Huggins (44:37):
You'll get access to a bonus podcast feed where
no corporate sponsors, and noads — just listener support
allowing us to make the show wewant to make. If you’d like to
join the party, support the workthat we do, and help make our
you can be the first to hear newepisodes and exclusive bonus content.
6th season the greatest yet,head to futureecologies.net/join
and choose whichever optionworks best for you.
Mendel Skulski (45:06):
Plus our community discord server,
stickers, patches, and nowtoques!
Adam Huggins (45:13):
That’s at futureecologies.net/join
Mendel Skulski (45:16):
Or you know, just keep sharing the show with
your community. It really helps.Ok — thanks for everything.
Adam Huggins (45:25):
You'll be hearing from us again soon.
You are listening to Season Five of
Future Ecologies
Mendel Skulski (00:10):
Okay, here we go.
Adam Huggins (00:12):
You know the drill.
Mendel Skulski (00:13):
Mendel,
Adam Huggins (00:13):
Adam,
Mendel Skulski (00:14):
Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins (00:15):
and this is the last episode of our fifth
season.
Mendel Skulski (00:19):
Thanks for coming with us!
Adam Huggins (00:20):
And don't worry, we will be back soon. In the
meantime, we're going to bekeeping the podcast feed warm
and cozy over the summer with afew extra treats for your ears.
Today, we've got somethingreally special. Because it's a
story about plants.
Mendel Skulski (00:37):
It's more of a mystery about plants. Because
despite our budding interest,our story today reveals that
many leaves remain unturned.
Adam Huggins (00:46):
The story comes to us from journalist and friend of
the show, Zoe Schlanger, theauthor of the newly released,
New York Times best-sellingbook, The Light Eaters — How the
Unseen World of PlantIntelligence Offers a New
Understanding of Life on Earth.
Mendel Skulski (01:03):
Zoë took one of our recorders to the jungles of
Chile and back to report on whatmight just be the world's most
ordinary, extraordinary plant.We'll let her take it from here.
So, without further ado, this isEverything Will Be Vine.
Introduction Voiceover (01:23):
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and
asserted territories of theMusqueam, Squamish, and
Tsleil-Waututh, this is FutureEcologies – exploring the shape
of our world through ecology,design, and sound.
Zoë Schlanger (02:08):
Journalists in my line of work tend to be focused
on death. Or the harbingers ofit — disease, disaster, decline.
That is how climate journalistsmark time as the earth passes
benchmark after grim benchmarkon its way into the foreseen
crisis. There’s only so much ofthis that one person can take.
(02:31):
Or perhaps my tolerance was thinand easily worn out after years
of focus on droughts and floods.In recent years I’d begun to
feel numb and empty. I neededsome of the opposite.
What, I wondered, is theopposite of death? Creation,
perhaps. A sense of becomingsinstead of endings. Plants are
(02:55):
that, given as they are tocontinuous growth. They’d
soothed me all my life, longbefore studies came out
confirming what we already knew— that time spent among plants
can ease the mind better than along sleep. Living in a dense
city, I’d walked in the parkunder a canopy of yews and elms
(03:16):
when I needed to clear my head;I’d spent long minutes gazing at
the new leaves forming on mypotted philodendrons when my
nerves were fried. Plants arethe very definition of creative
becoming — they are in constantmotion, albeit slow motion,
probing the air and soil in arelentless quest for a livable
(03:37):
future.
A life spent constantly growingyet rooted in a single spot
comes with tremendouschallenges. To meet them, plants
have come up with some of themost creative methods for
survival of any living thing, usincluded. Many are so ingenious
(03:57):
that they seem nearly impossiblefor an order of life we’ve
mostly relegated to the marginsof our own lives, the decoration
that frames the theatrics ofbeing an animal. Yet there they
are all the same, theseunbelievable abilities of
plants, defying our anaemicexpectations. Through
(04:17):
conversations with scientistsaround the world I would learn
that their way of life is soastonishing, that no one really
knows the limits of what a plantcan do. In fact, it seemed that
no one quite knows what a plantreally is.
This is, of course, a problemfor the scientific field of
botany. Or it’s the mostexciting thing to happen to it
(04:39):
in a generation, depending onhow comfortable you feel with
seismic shifts in what you oncethought to be true. As I looked
deeper, I would find ascientific field eating itself
alive with contradictions —points of contention multiplying
as fast as the mysteries. Butsomething in me was attracted to
this lack of neat answers. Whodoesn’t feel both drawn to and
(05:03):
repulsed by the unknown?
In the 19th century, naturalistAlexander Von Humboldt wondered
aloud why being outdoors evokedsomething existential and true.
“Nature everywhere speaks to manin a voice that is familiar to
(05:23):
his soul,” he wrote; “Everythingis interaction and reciprocal,”
and therefore nature “gives theimpression of the whole.”
Humboldt went on to introducethe European intellectual world
to the concept of the planet asa living whole, with climatic
systems and interlockingbiological and geological
(05:44):
patterns bound up as a“net-like, intricate fabric.”
This was Western science’searliest glimmer of ecological
thinking, where the naturalworld became a series of biotic
communities, each acting uponthe others.
The question that I found miredin controversy was whether
(06:06):
plants could be consideredintelligent — and, for an even
bolder minority, whether theycould be considered conscious
and communicative. For all oftheir amazing, adaptive
behaviour, were they sensateagents? Or, were they each
simply acting out apredetermined genetic script?
(06:27):
Although I had come to thiscorner of the scientific world
at an exciting time, thesequestions were anything but new.
At the turn of the 20th Century,Jagadish Chandra Bose, a
physicist-turned-biologist inKolkata, India, had begun to
experiment and measure theelectrical responses of plants,
and became convinced that theyshared a functional similarity
(06:50):
to those in animal tissues.
JC Bose biopic (06:52):
1901, the Royal Institution, London. He gave a
lecture demonstration of hislatest experiment.
The Secret Life of Plants (07:00):
Touching the leaves of Mimosa pudica with
a cotton soaked in ether, Bosedemonstrates the fainting
response in a plant.
The Bose experiments were deniedpublication by the Royal
Society. By daring to suggestthat electrical responses are
present in plants, he hadoffended the learned members.
Zoë Schlanger (07:19):
Despite inventing instruments of unprecedented
precision across severaldisciplines, Bose would be
expunged from the scientificcanon for his fringe beliefs — a
fate not shared by AlexanderGraham Bell, who was driven to
invent the telephone in hopes ofcommunicating with the dead; or
Thomas Edison, whose experimentsranged into telekinesis and
(07:42):
telepathy. Dark-skinned andIndian, however, Bose and his
ideas were denied a place inWestern textbooks for nearly a
century.
Popular books were a differentstory. In 1973, the publication
of The Secret Life of Plantstook the world by storm. 5 years
later, a film by the same name,with a soundtrack by Stevie
(08:05):
Wonder.
Unknown (08:06):
Plants have been wired into a complex computer. The
change of mood as they react tothe crowds of visitors will be
converted into musicalexpression. As the people move
among the plants, the soundsthey hear are the plants
reacting to their presence. Anephemeral exchange of energy
(08:30):
linking to diverse life forms,becomes a symphony of emotions.
Zoë Schlanger (08:37):
At the dawn of New Age culture, the world was
ready to inhale ideas about howplants were just as alive as we
are. It was an immediate andmeteoric success, offering an
elysian new way to attend to theliving earth.
Unknown (08:51):
In some mysterious way, the plant which is attached to
the instrument is able to feelthe mutilation of its comrade.
Zoë Schlanger (08:59):
The Secret Life of Plants was a glimpse at a
society on the verge of directcommunication with its leafy
brethren. It would inspirethousands of hours of one-sided
conversations, and some veryworn-out cassettes of Wolfgang
Amadeus Motzart.
And it would turn out to be abeautiful collection of myths.
The Kirlian Witness (09:19):
During intensive periods of meditation
with plants, I learned tochannel my energies and enter
new states of being. Afterspending many hours in deep
concentration, I am able totranscend my physical boundaries
and allow my own spirit tocommune with the spirit of my
(09:42):
plant.
Zoë Schlanger (09:44):
Many scientists would try and fail to reproduce
the tantalising “research” thebook presented, eventually
deemed “fallacious andunprovable”. According to
botanists working at the time,the damage that Secret Life
caused to the field cannot beoverstated. The twin gatekeepers
(10:05):
of science — funding boards andpeer review boards — closed the
doors to any proposals with awhiff of plant “behaviour”.
Over the last 15 years, thattide has finally begun to turn,
with a gentle swell in bothresearch funding and academic
publications. The march oftechnology, genetic sequencing
(10:29):
and advanced microscopes, hasmade it possible to come to
previously outlandishconclusions with real rigour.
But, still sensitive to thefallout from the Secret Life,
and due to the squishy, nebulousimplications of the word, most
scientific authors don’t useterms like “intelligence” to
describe what they find.Nonetheless, their results
(10:52):
suggested that plants were muchmore sophisticated than anyone
had dared think.
From the nerve-like actionpotentials first observed by
Bose, to capabilities of memory,hearing, recognition of kin, and
incredible interactions withinsects, the papers probing
remarkable plant behaviours aregrowing from a trickle to a
(11:15):
fairly robust stream.
One such paper caught myattention. It documented a vine
doing something that should havebeen impossible — a magic trick
that few animals have mastered,and that no accepted plant
mechanism could explain.
So, in April 2022, I flew duesouth for 13 hours — first from
(11:39):
New York City to Santiago, andfrom there to Puerto Montt.
Then, after driving for another2 hours, past seemingly endless
fields of potatoes bordered byrivers and lakes, I arrived into
the Valdivian temperaterainforests of southern Chile.
Not unlike parts of the PacificNorthwest, the climate was cool
and misty, and every availablespace was absolutely brimming
(12:04):
with plant life. The constantsights of green and sounds of
rain blanketed my senses in avibrant static hum. In 2014, a
Peruvian ecologist named ErnestoGianoli had discovered that a
vine, common to theserainforests, was able to mimic
(12:25):
the shape of almost any plant itgrew beside... a botanical
chameleon.
Ernesto Gianoli (12:33):
[Spanish]
Zoë Schlanger (12:34):
I'm not finding what I'm looking for. It seems
like they may have cut them.
Ernesto Gianoli (12:43):
[Spanish]
Zoë Schlanger (12:44):
I thought they were right here.
Unfortunately, the suddennotoriety had made this little
vine a target for poachers. It'sappropriate then that it has a
particular talent forcamouflage.
Ernesto Gianoli (12:58):
But here I found...
Zoë Schlanger (13:02):
Oh, wow it's so tiny.
Ernesto Gianoli (13:03):
This is Boquila, yeah it’s so tiny, This
is Boquila and this isRhaphithamnus. At first glance
you’d say it’s the same. Quitedifficult to tell who's who.
Zoë Schlanger (13:13):
This is Ernesto Gianoli himself. And in his
hands, Boquila trifoliolata — aslender, climbing vine, with
leaves in clusters of three.Here, one strand of Boquila was
winding its way up a tree,Rhaphithamnus spinosus. On the
part of the vine climbing thetree, its leaves had
transformed (13:33):
now a dark glossy green, shrunk to a fraction of
their original size, and taperedto a point. And this was just
one example of Boquila’smimicry. Ernesto and his
colleagues have found Boquilamodelling itself on more than 20
species, and counting!
Ernesto Gianoli (13:52):
So far, what we knew about mimicry was a one to
one relationship. This species Amimics this species B. But then,
comes along Boquila and says no,I can mimic very different
species.
Zoë Schlanger (14:08):
In the world of plants, mimicry is otherwise
quite limited — shaped byspecial circumstances of
coevolution. Like in the case ofrye, once culled as an unwanted
weed by early farmers. It waseffectively selected to blend in
so well with the fields of wheatthat it became a cereal in its
own right. Or certain types ofmistletoe, which are each
(14:31):
obliged to parasitize aparticular host plant, tapping
directly into its vascularsystem. The leaves of Australian
she-oak mistletoe are strikinglysimilar to Australian she-oak,
likewise the leaves ofeucalyptus mistletoe resemble
those of eucalyptus. Evolutionhas sculpted these plants to
blend in with their specificsurroundings, but on an animal
(14:53):
timescale their appearance isfixed. Not so, with Boquila.
Ernesto Gianoli (14:59):
The same individual can mimic two
different species.
Zoë Schlanger (15:04):
Boquila’s mimicry is spontaneous and flexible. A
single vine may climb acrossseveral different plants and
change its leaves accordingly.
Ernesto Gianoli (15:13):
I mean, in terms of size, one to ten ratio.
And in terms of shape, andcolor, vein patterns — a broad
array of traits. What ismimicry? Similar colours, maybe
similar shapes. But this goesbeyond that.
Zoë Schlanger (15:33):
What’s more, direct contact is unnecessary
for Boquila to model itselfafter another plant. It may
simply be growing nearby.
Whoa. That's huge.
Ernesto Gianoli (15:43):
Yeah it's huge. And also this, as I told, this
wavy...
Zoë Schlanger (15:48):
Uh huh. The wavy edge.
Ernesto Gianoli (15:51):
Yeah wavy edge.
Zoë Schlanger (15:52):
Wow. That's unbelievable. I mean, that's
like, what 15, 16 times the sizeover there?
Ernesto Gianoli (16:00):
Yes, exactly. Here, small Boquilas. But starts
growing larger and larger. Notall the plants, of course — not
all the leaves, of course.
Zoë Schlanger (16:09):
So if you were an herbivore, your first impression
would be...?
Ernesto Gianoli (16:15):
That it's another species.
Zoë Schlanger (16:16):
Yeah. Wait, is this Boquila?
Ernesto Gianoli (16:18):
Yes.
Zoë Schlanger (16:20):
It's even got the yellowing.
Ernesto Gianoli (16:22):
And if we look carefully around there are five
more.
Zoë Schlanger (16:29):
We are in a spot totally surrounded by Boquila on
all sides. It's sort of a glenof Boquila. There's maybe 10 or
15 other species of plants, allgrowing up as thick bushes, and
the Boquila is twining aroundall of them. And on almost every
single one I'm walking by, youhave to look very closely. But
(16:54):
the Boquila has shifted itsshape. In some areas of its
vines to match. Most of thesespecies, in some places, the
leaf is almost the size of myhand to match long, large leaves
of one species and 10 metersaway, it's smaller than my pinky
(17:16):
nail to match a species withvery small, dark, glossy leaves
that have a strong vein down themiddle and the Boquila matches
that vein and that glossperfectly too. It's just
astounding. And the longer Ispend staring at an area the
more Boquila appear, but ittakes a while so if I was an
(17:40):
herbivore, I for sure would betricked. If I was a deer walking
through here, I just can'timagine if they're visually
guided how they’d distinguishbetween these plants.
And not all of these modelplants are endemic to this
rainforest. Ernesto showed me itnext to a plant, creeping
(18:03):
buttercup, that had onlyrecently been introduced,
sometime in the last 20 years.Here, Boquila’s duplication was
strikingly partial andimperfect. It almost felt like
witnessing a young artistpractising their still-life
sketches — actively refiningtheir skill in rendering the
world.
Every time Ernesto goes out intothe field to study Boquila, he
(18:27):
and his colleagues discover itmodelling itself on yet another
species. I was present for theaddition of two plants to this
ever-growing list. First, aspecies of maidenhair fern, so
far the only documented instanceof Boquila mimicking a fern,
which I found myself. Andsecond, an overstory tree known
as Notro.
Ernesto Gianoli (18:47):
This is the first record of Boquila doing
something with Notro. This shapeof elongated leaves is quite
rare to observe in Boquila.
Zoë Schlanger (18:58):
Still riding high off of my own small
contribution, I asked Ernestowhat it felt like to be the
first one to notice Boquila’smagic trick.
Ernesto Gianoli (19:08):
What is the dream of a kid who likes
science? To make a discovery,right? A dinosaur bone or
whatever. It was close tothat... Close to that dream of
the kid. But still, for it to bereally fulfilled, I need to see
(19:28):
the mechanism elucidated.
Zoë Schlanger (19:30):
And in the hopes of elucidating the mysterious
mechanism of Boquila, twocompeting hypotheses have been
proposed — both of themrevolutionary to plant science.
Ernesto Gianoli (19:41):
To crack the code of Boquila immediately will
lead us to crack a general codeof plants. They go hand by hand,
I mean. Understanding Boquilawill imply understanding plants.
That’s my feeling.
Zoë Schlanger (20:04):
The first proposal comes from František
Baluška, founding member of theSociety for Plant Neurobiology,
later conservatively renamed theSociety for Plant Signalling and
Behavior. František is acontroversial figure. Unlike
most of his peers, he is a loudand proud champion of plant
(20:24):
intelligence — in fact, heevangalizes the subjective
consciousness of all cellularlife.
His hypothesis is as surprisingas it is concise. He believes
that plants can see.
František Baluška (20:40):
Vision in plants is controversial, but it
is strange that it is. Becauseplants evolved from algae and
algae have vision. So, if algaehave vision, why should plants
lose this very useful ability?So, I am surprised that people
are surprised that the plantshould see, because if the algae
see why not plants?
Zoë Schlanger (21:02):
The suggestion that plants have a sense of
sight goes back to 1905, whenthe German scientist Gottlieb
Haberlandt described howstructures on the surface of
leaves could function as simpleoptics, affording plants
thousands or even millions oftiny eyes.
František Baluška (21:18):
Of course, vision in plants is not like our
humans vision. You know, theydon't have an eye like we. They
have cells on the epidermis,these cells will act as a lens
and will transmit any object youwill expose to these cells on
the other side. This wasexperimentally shown but
ignored.
Zoë Schlanger (21:40):
Haberlandt’s theory would go on to fascinate
Charles Darwin’s son, Francis,but ultimately it was forgotten.
How could a plant, apparentlywithout a nervous system or
anything we recognize as abrain, resolve an image?
František Baluška (21:54):
Everything is projected on the next layer. And
how the cells in the next layerare processing the images and
sending messages further in theplant, no one knows.
Zoë Schlanger (22:04):
Since Haberlandt, plants have been revealed to
have more kinds ofphotoreceptors on their surface
than are found in the human eye.There should be no surprise that
light matters to plants. Lightis literally matter, to plants.
As any sighted person knows, thequalities of light convey a
wealth of useful information.Still, it’s a big claim to say
(22:27):
that plants are not just weatherstations, but telescopes.
Unknown (22:32):
Of course, this could be studied, but first, the
science must acknowledge thisability and then the agencies
which give money for researchshould be willing to give money
for future research, but upuntil now, nothing happens, you
know, all what is done now isjust our hobby.
Zoë Schlanger (22:49):
František points to new research on several close
evolutionary cousins of plants.A model cyanobacteria with an
eyespot that can sense a light’sdirection and move towards it.
Next, a dinoflagellate thatbuilds a structure that
stunningly resembles a lens andretina — a chimeric assemblage
of plastids and mitochondria, noless. And, of course, he points
(23:13):
to Boquila.
Unknown (23:14):
There is no way how we would explain this without some
kind of vision.
Zoë Schlanger (23:19):
So, as outlandish as it may sound at first, a kind
of plant “vision” is notentirely out of the question,
and is one of the fewexplanations that has been
offered to make sense ofBoquila. But Ernesto is not
convinced that vision is themechanism behind this unassuming
vine’s abilities.
Ernesto Gianoli (23:38):
Plants don't need to see in order to do great
things. How can texture, how canthickness be told from an image?
And don't forget that there aresome features that are hidden.
Zoë Schlanger (23:56):
Case in point, the very first plant I saw
Boquila copy with my own eyes —Rhaphithamnus spinosus. This
tree’s leaves curl over at theend, creating a spiny tip or
spike. Likewise, in its mimicry,so does Boquila. But looking
down from above, thisdistinguishing feature of
(24:16):
Raphitamnus is simply notvisible.
Ernesto Gianoli (24:20):
You have to feel! You have to put your
finger on the underside of theleaf. How this is able to see
the underside of a leaf whenthey are placed in a particular
direction that cannot make thispossible?
Zoë Schlanger (24:35):
Could it be that Boquila was truly covered in
eyelike organs, and was somehowable to integrate this
information across differentparts of its body — carefully
observing the Rhaphithamnus fromall angles? Or was it a hole in
the plant-vision theory?
Ernesto Gianoli (24:52):
I think this is too much of an anthropocentric
view of the phenomenon.
Zoë Schlanger (24:57):
As we strain to understand how Boquila can
accomplish the seeminglyimpossible, itself just one
example from a wave ofnewly-discovered plant
capabilities, the charge of“anthropomorphism” looms heavy
in the minds of many scientists.The risk of discussing plant
sensation, perception, orcognition is that such language
(25:19):
is inescapably tied to oursensation, perception, and
cognition; that habituation withour animal faculties biases us
to interpret plants on familiar,human terms, rather than on
their own.
František Baluška (25:34):
Most people are not very happy with these
words like "pain", "cognition",and "intelligence", and
"vision", and "hearing". So theythink this is forbidden for
plants, somehow. When you do ascience, you should start with a
simple system and then to go tothe more complex. And we would
not have this problem withanthropomorphism if we would
(25:55):
start our sciences withbacteria, then algae, protozoa,
protists, and then some plants —lower plants, higher plants —
animals, and then humans at theend. You all the time are blamed
by some kind ofanthropomorphism, if you find
something similar to humans, youknow. Of course, we are in
evolution connected. And noweverything — every this term —
(26:17):
is loaded with human activities.So if you say sleep, pain,
cognition, anything, they sayyou try to humanize plants. We
try to convince them that we say"plant cognition". It is not a
human cognition. It is aplant-specific cognition.
Zoë Schlanger (26:35):
Intelligence is a loaded word, perhaps overly
connected to our ideas ofacademic achievement. It’s been
weaponized against fellow humansfor millennia, used to divide
people into hierarchies of worthand power. Yet it is, by its
very definition, still a wordthat contains the germ of what
(26:57):
we mean by alert, awake to theworld, spontaneous, responsive,
decision-making. From the Latininterlegere — to discern, to
choose between.
So do plants see? Or does anassumed primacy of vision render
plants as lesser animals —diminishing these green bodies,
(27:20):
and leaving no room for therecognition that they may deploy
means that far exceed the human.
Ernesto Gianoli (27:28):
It's very human in nature, to try to put plants
within the frameworks that weare comfortable to deal with.
But sorry, plans are different.So, prepare. Prepare to be
challenged. Prepare to be provenwrong.
Mendel Skulski (27:50):
When we come back, Ernesto has his own theory
to explain this remarkable plantplasticity.
Adam Huggins (27:57):
Plastic plants?!
Mendel Skulski (27:58):
Those too... after the break.
Zoë Schlanger (28:23):
For all the times he has seen Boquila
trifoliolata, Ernesto hadnoticed something. Its mimicry
is rarely total. Instead, it’spatchy. Some Boquila just look
like… Boquila, even on a vineclimbing a tree. This patchiness
reminded him of the stochasticlook of leaf spots and wilts and
(28:44):
mottling. That is, it remindedhim of the infection patterns of
bacteria and viruses.
Over the past few decades,another biological revolution
has been unfolding. A newappreciation for the so-called
“microbiome” — the communitiesof single-celled organisms
living in and on everythingelse. Famously, in any given
(29:07):
person, there are about as manynon-human cells than there are
human cells. No longer aremicrobes considered to be
exclusively vectors of diseaseand decay, but are now also
recognized as essentialcollaborators in digestion,
mood, and ultimately health. Andhumanity is not unique in this
regard. Effectively all animals,like termites, fundamentally
(29:32):
rely on their microbiome.
To most people, the essence of atermite is its ability to digest
wood. Research has shown thatthis ability is conferred not by
the genes of the termite, but bybacteria living within them.
Correspondingly, those bacteriarely on other, smaller bacteria
(29:53):
living within them. This is thedizzyingly nested perspective
that pioneering evolutionarybiologist Lynn Margulis first
popularized as the “holobiont”.She defined the holobiont as a
composite organism made of manyorganisms working in concert. It
includes the microbiome, butalso the macrobiome — the larger
(30:16):
beings in which and upon whichthe microbiomes live.
Margulis proposed that complexmulticellular life first came
into being when microbes ofdifferent abilities teamed up,
eventually fusing into oneentity, most notably
incorporating mitochondria andchloroplasts. She believed that
these sorts of intercellularsymbioses may have been more
(30:38):
important to our evolutionaryhistory than the slow, random
mutation science believed to bethe source of all evolutionary
change.
Ernesto Gianoli (30:46):
Don't forget that once the mitochondria was a
bacteria. It was kind of aparasite that was welcomed by
the cell, saying "Okay, you willmake energy and I will give you
a home." And that work very wellso far.
Zoë Schlanger (31:10):
Although initially ignored and ridiculed,
her theory of endosymbiosis isnow widely accepted as fact.
“The completely self-contained‘individual’ is a myth that
needs to be replaced with a moreflexible description,” Margulis
wrote, with her son DorianSagan, “Each of us is a sort of
(31:30):
loose committee.”
This state of nature is one ofinterpenetration and mingling
that defies easy categorization.It occupies a middle place, both
in the material reality of theworld and in our understanding
of it. To Báyò Akómoláfé, aYoruba poet and philosopher,
(31:56):
this middle “is not halfwaybetween two poles; it is
porousness that mocks the veryidea of separation.” He
describes our collectivebiological reality as a state of
“brilliant between-ness” that“defeats everything, corrodes
every boundary, spills throughmarked territory, and crosses
(32:16):
out every confident line.”
What if, Ernesto wondered, thiswas the key to Boquila? What if
its flexible appearance was anexpression of a flexible
holobiome? He conceived anexperiment.
Ernesto Gianoli (32:33):
It is very important to understand the
experimental design. There'sthis Boquila plant mimicking
other plants. So we'll focus onone particular interaction —
Boquila and this tree calledRhaphithamnus. So Boquila and
the tree. We spotted this treewith Boquila growing onto it.
(32:55):
And specifically, we took leavesof Boquila doing the trick, I
mean, leaves of Boquilaresembling leaves of the tree.
And — this is very important —leaves from the same individual
Boquila that we're not mimickingthe tree leaves. So we have
(33:15):
these triplet. Leaves of thetree, Boquila doing the trick,
and Boquila being just thestandard Boquila.
Zoë Schlanger (33:24):
Each pair of Boquila leaves, both mimicking
and non-mimicking, were pickedfrom the same vine, and the same
distance from the tree. Theygathered these three sets of
leaves from 5 sites, and broughtthem all back to the lab.
Ernesto Gianoli (33:38):
We analyzed the communities of leaf endophytic
bacteria,
Zoë Schlanger (33:45):
Leaf endophytes are the microbiome of the leaf.
The bacteria living within itstissues.
Ernesto Gianoli (33:50):
There is not one species of bacteria, there's
hundreds.
Zoë Schlanger (33:54):
Ernesto’s hypothesis was that if the
microbiome played some part inBoquila’s abilities, then the
community of bacteria in themimic leaf should resemble that
of the tree, and differsignificantly from the
non-mimic.
Ernesto Gianoli (34:09):
And that's exactly what the results showed.
Zoë Schlanger (34:12):
The leaves that successfully mimicked the
Rhaphithamnus shared 255distinct species of endophytes —
more than triple those shared bythe non-mimicking leaves.
Ernesto Gianoli (34:24):
I think this is strong evidence of the
involvement — I cannot say morethan that — the involvement
somewhat of bacteria in thisphenomenon of leaf mimicry. One
possibility, I think, is that ina way, these microbes partially
control for instance, leafshape, and this opens the avenue
(34:49):
for research on this directionof genetic control, epigenetic
control by bacteria and so on.
Zoë Schlanger (34:57):
Ernesto is hinting at something with
profound implications. Hesuspects that bacteria and
viruses exert influence on theshape of all plants — perhaps by
ferrying genes and RNA directly,or perhaps by selectively
activating or silencingpre-existing parts of the plant
(35:18):
genome.
Ernesto Gianoli (35:19):
What literature tells us is that microbes are
able to modify gene expressionof other organisms. This can be
airborne, like a bath ofmicrobes, cloud of microbe,
whatever you prefer.
Zoë Schlanger (35:40):
The holobiome makes it difficult to delineate
where one organism ends andanother begins, metaphorically,
but also very literally. Whatlives inside also often lives on
and around. Each of uscreatures, like Pigpen from the
Peanuts, a blurry cloud ofactivity; a burst of flavour in
(36:00):
the atmospheric soup.
Ernesto Gianoli (36:03):
And then we are forced to conceive that all
plants are constantly exposed tothis process.
Zoë Schlanger (36:12):
But why then just Boquila? Why aren’t all plants,
or animals too for that matter,integrating each other’s
features on contact? Well, wecan’t know for sure that they
don’t — at least on some subtlelevel. Boquila itself was
described by Western botany in1782, and it took us more than
(36:35):
200 years to notice it could dothis. Could there be other
mimics all over the world,hiding in plain sight?
Or is Boquila simply unique, andparticularly porous? Maybe most
plants only speak in theholobiome code of their own
species, while Boquila crackedsome universal cypher —
(36:57):
permitting its appearance to beoverwritten by its neighbours,
for its own adaptive advantage.
In the first paper everpublished on Boquila’s mimicry,
Ernesto and his colleaguesmeasured how copying the leaves
of its surroundings correlatedwith less herbivory. From this
view, Boquila’s talents could bethe undirected outcome of
natural selection — agency andintelligence not required.
(37:28):
One experiment poses a threat toErnesto’s microbial hypothesis.
In 2021, a study was publishedclaiming to demonstrate Boquila
growing on, and mimicking, aplastic plant. Of course, such a
synthetic model has no holobiometo offer, and the authors
claimed it as a strong supportfor plant vision.
(37:50):
However, this paper was met withcriticism. Ernesto felt that the
experimental controls were veryweak, and took issue with the
analysis. The study was acollaboration between an
unaffiliated independentresearcher — an amateur
scientist — along with a studentof František Baluška. František
himself is editor-in-chief ofthe journal in which the paper
(38:14):
was published, drawingcomplaints of an undeclared
conflict of interest.
But all the negative attentionhasn’t discouraged František and
his student, Felipe Yamashita,from looking further. František
reports that they haveyet-unpublished data detailing
how Boquila is capable ofmimicking nothing more than a
photograph of a leaf.
František Baluška (38:35):
Yes, because we have no data that the Boquila
is mimicking, not only a plastichouseplant, which is published,
but we have now data that it ismimicking even pictures. So, if
you provide the Boquila with thepictures of leaves, different
kinds of plants, then theBoquila start within two, three
days, making some mimicking ofthese pictures.
Zoë Schlanger (38:56):
Ironically, František and Ernesto have a
very similar intuition about whythe other’s hypothesis is wrong.
That is, the sheer breadth ofBoquila’s ability to emulate.
František Baluška (39:08):
Because the Boquila is mimicking many
physical parameters, it ismimicking the shapes, color,
texture, size and so on. So, itis not easy to transmit such
information by some kinds ofbacteria. And even if there are
some different bacteria onmimicking leaves like on the
non-mimicking, it is not anyevidence that the bacteria are
(39:30):
having something to do with themimicking. For me, this story is
really not able to explaineverything. I think it is only
possible with some kind of thevision
Ernesto Gianoli (39:43):
I would say very lightly, "Show me the
pictures." Because there are nopictures in that paper. If
Boquila is mimicking plasticplants, this is very easy. Take
a picture and show it to us, asI've done in every paper or
article I have written.
I am a scientist. I want tounderstand. I don't want to be
(40:05):
proven right. I don't want to befamous. I want to understand.
Hopefully be able to see thesolution of this mystery within
my lifetime.
Zoë Schlanger (40:21):
One of the strangest things about Boquila
isn’t the plant itself, it’s thenear total lack of research
attention. To the few scientistsattempting to tease out its
mysteries, even Ernesto, itremains a side project.
This may partly be lingeringskepticism or trepidation from
within the scientific community,but it’s also partly practical.
(40:44):
Boquila is just not easy to workwith, compared to typical
laboratory plants — so called“model organisms”. So far, it
has been challenging to growfrom cuttings in a greenhouse,
although František says they aremaking good progress. Still, the
patchiness of its mimicrychallenges traditional
statistical methods.
(41:09):
For the time being, Ernesto andFrantišek may disagree on the
most promising mechanism toexplain Boquila. But they share
at least one thing (41:17):
an admiration for the 20th century
philosopher Karl Popper.
Popper is widely held to be afather of the modern scientific
method and its premise offalsification. Briefly, he put
forward the idea that scientifictheories are never really proven
to be true, they may only befalsified — or in other words,
(41:40):
disproven. According to Popper,science does not sit upon a
bedrock foundation of truth.Instead, the great scaffolding
of all scientific theory issupported only by pilings in
swampy ground. To quote Popper,"the piles are driven down from
above into the swamp, but notdown to any natural or given
(42:02):
base. And if we stop driving thepiles deeper, it is not because
we have reached firm ground. Wesimply stop when we are
satisfied that the piles arefirm enough to carry the
structure, at least for the timebeing."
So we will always have morequestions than answers. Are
(42:26):
plants more akin to us than wehave been prepared to admit? Or
are they different in ways wewill forever strain to imagine?
Can we call them cunning intheir own right? Or will such
language always be too human?
We share our planet with and oweour lives to a form of life at
(42:50):
once alien and familiar. On whatbasis do we owe them our respect
and appreciation? In the wordsof ethnobotanist Timothy Plowman
"They can eat light. Isn't thatenough?"
The more we learn about plants,the more their complexities seem
(43:11):
to multiply. The swamp, it turnsout is full of life.
Adam Huggins (43:30):
Zoë Schlanger is the author of “The Light Eaters:
How the Unseen World of PlantIntelligence Offers a New
Understanding of Life on Earth”.
Mendel Skulski (43:40):
And in which the story of Boquila is just one
chapter. “The Light Eaters” isavailable now, wherever you get
books.
Adam Huggins (43:48):
This episode of Future Ecologies was produced by
Mendel Skulski, and me, AdamHuggin
Mendel Skulski (43:54):
With music by Modern Biology, Mort Garson,
Hotspring, Thumbug, and SunfishMoon Light
Adam Huggins (44:03):
Cover art by Ali Silva
Mendel Skulski (44:05):
And with special thanks to Fiona Glen, Gianni
Fontana, and Eden Zinchik.
Adam Huggins (44:11):
Thanks also to our patrons. Future Ecologies is a
sort of loose committee — aholobiome with each and every
one of you. We would not existwithout your continuous support,
inoculating us against a hostilemedia economy, inspiring us with
horizontally transferred memes,and most of all, helping us grow
(44:33):
— slowly and steadily, upwardstowards the light.
Mendel Skulski (44:36):
We’re proud to be an independent podcast — with
Adam Huggins (44:37):
You'll get access to a bonus podcast feed where
no corporate sponsors, and noads — just listener support
allowing us to make the show wewant to make. If you’d like to
join the party, support the workthat we do, and help make our
you can be the first to hear newepisodes and exclusive bonus content.
6th season the greatest yet,head to futureecologies.net/join
and choose whichever optionworks best for you.
Mendel Skulski (45:06):
Plus our community discord server,
stickers, patches, and nowtoques!
Adam Huggins (45:13):
That’s at futureecologies.net/join
Mendel Skulski (45:16):
Or you know, just keep sharing the show with
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Adam Huggins (45:25):
You'll be hearing from us again soon.
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