Recent assumptions about the nature and physiology of plants could revolutionise our perspective on the world of plants. But orthodoxy is not easy to change. The first of this two-part article deals with plant neurobiology.
The Leska Trail in the Risnjak National Park in Northern Croatia is a peaceful path through the beech and fir forest. A number of very clear information panels in Croatian and English illustrate its characteristics. One of them tells the story of the life of a tree stump and says, among other things, that the root systems of trees that grow close together sometimes merge, a phenomenon that becomes more intense after a tree is felled. In this way, the remaining stump derives its nutrients from another tree to which it is connected through its roots. The cambium [a plant tissue inside the trunk] continues to grow.
Science has actually proven this peculiar, curious statement to be true more than once. On the surface, this simple «fact» appears to be rather innocuous, but in recent decades, a veritable war has been waged over how trees behave, whether they are passive or not, or the extent to which phenomena like the passage of nutrients or even «messages» to and from the components of a forest are voluntary. Consequently, this has brought a revolutionary change of perspective in the image we have of trees and their ecosystems, and the narrative associated with them.
Author
Biologist, journalist and popular science writer, on the editorial staff of various science, photography and nature journals: «Oasis», «Terra», «Scienza e vita», «Focus», «Focus junior», and «Geo»; Editor-in-Chief of «Asferico», a nature photography magazine. His latest book is How to Build an Alien (Codice edizioni, 2021).
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