Rooted in experience: The sensory world of plants

In Aperiomics the Roy animal kingdom and Biv plant kingdom are two kinds of systems in economics as well. A Biv wealthy economy has abundance and evolves like plants do. This happens through Gb private property, a plant in effect owns the ground it grows on like a farmers owns his field. Both don't move around because they have enough abundant resources where they are, so abundance is a necessary and sufficient condition for private property to work in an economy.

A Roy economy works like the animal kingdom, there is little private property and most is G publicly owned. People then don't own this public property but can use what they can control, for example a Y mafia might control a city without owning the property in it. A Ro neighborhood watch association might control crime in their area without owning it. Animals don't own the ground they live on, they can control a territory though. So scarcity of resources is the basis for public ownership of property, there is little point in owning a small piece of ground if it doesn't have enough resources for someone to stay there.

Rooted in experience: The sensory world of plants

(Image: Philippe Sainte-Laudy Photograph/Flickr/Getty)

HAVE you ever wondered what the grass under your feet feels, what an apple tree smells, or a marigold sees?
Plants stimulate our senses constantly, but most of us never consider them as sensory beings too. In fact
 senses are extremely important to plants. Whatever life throws at them, they remain rooted to the spot -
they cannot migrate in search of food, escape a swarm of locusts or find shelter from a storm. To grow and
 survive in unpredictable conditions, plants need to sense their environment and react accordingly. Some people
may not be comfortable describing what plants do as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. They
certainly lack noses, eyes, ears, mouths and skin, but in what follows, I hope to convince you that the sensory
world of plants is not so very different from our own. Daniel Chamovitz

SIGHT

Like us, plants see light. Just as we have photoreceptors in our eyes, plants have their own throughout their
stems and leaves
Read more

TOUCH

Branches sway in the wind, insects crawl across leaves, vines search out supports to cling to: plants live in a
very tactile world
Read more

SMELL

11:53 21 August 2012

All plants have a sense of smell. It allows them to communicate, and studies show that they ripen in
response to the whiff of certain chemicals
Read more

TASTE

A plant's taste is as interconnected with smell as it is in humans – but they use it to sense danger
and drought and even to recognise relatives
Read more

HEARING

Music isn't ecologically relevant for plants, but there are sounds that could be advantageous for them to hear
Read more

ADVERTISEMENT

LIFE