Quick response dashed off without sources:
Trees actually have a cluster of cells at the base of their root system that seems to act in very brain like ways. If you damage it or cut it off, suddenly the tree starts acting “dumbly”, like it’s brain damaged.
Trees actually do a ton of really complex things that certainly look like they’re communicating with other trees and plants, via signals sent along their root systems (I vaguely recall it was electrochemical signalling, much like in brains?). They stop doing such things when they get “brain damage” to their root cluster that seems to do signal coordination.
If you watch videos of vines growing but sped up, they look very much like worms, tapping around, “looking” for where they should grow. And they have a little cluster of cells at their tip that act as sensors. If you cut the sensor tip off, they stop “looking” and look like a drunk man, stumbling around blindly. It’s like you cut off their eyes.
Plants are actually able to sense a ton of different things, and they have reactions to them. It’s just that we can’t see the reactions because they either a) happen on too slowly for us to see them or b) happen chemically, so we can’t see them. For example, you know the famous study showing that when a giraffe eats a particular type of tree leaves, the tree releases a chemical that goes through the air and “warns” other trees in the area, and they start developing tannins which make their leaves bitter tasting to the giraffe? I thought that was a neat one-off trick. It’s actually super duper common across plants. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of all of the things they’re doing we can’t see with our normal senses.
They’ve done some really clever experiments to show that some plants at least, can learn and remember things.
Again, I don’t put crazy high odds. I’d probably put the odds that an oak tree is conscious at about the same probability I put on a worm being conscious.
I recommend reading The Hidden Life of Trees for an infodump about all of the crazy things trees do if you’re curious about this sort of thing.
Thank you for sharing this! I’ve been considering doing this exact challenge and it helped me have a better sense of the pros and cons.
It’s important for people to share the successes and the failures of this sort of challenge, and of course, people disproportionately write about when it works than when it doesn’t.