Plant may ‘scream,’ but that doesn’t mean they have feelings

Few comments seem to irritate some gardeners more than saying plants don’t have feelings. It’s something I repeat regularly when I talk about fearless pruning or ripping out a plant you don’t like, and without fail I am on the receiving end of admonishing comments from extremely offended gardeners.

Plants, they insist, are living beings and absolutely do have feelings.

Because I’m apparently interested in wasting my breath, I usually comeback with a clarification that plants do not have the capacity to experience pleasure, joy or pain and are therefore not sentient beings. As you might imagine, my track record on swaying these people is not good.

I make it a point not to anthropomorphize plants because it prevents gardeners from doing the hard things that are sometimes necessary in the garden. Once you start thinking seriously that plants are your friends, it becomes more difficult to cut off a limb, leave them to die or treat them with tough love.

All of these things are part of gardening well. Pruning must be done for the health of plants. Growing perennials, trees and shrubs “hard” — when plants are left to fend mostly for themselves after getting established, which encourages deep roots and a better ability to adapt to environmental stresses than plants that are coddled with supplemental watering — is good for them.

Recognizing that a plant isn’t right for your garden isn’t something that’s good for the plant, but it is very good for the mental health of the gardener.

Recently, however, my argument that all of these things should be done without guilt because plants don’t have feelings took a big hit. It turns out that plants scream when they are stressed.

Scientists have discovered that plants emit ultrasonic sounds when they are drought-stressed. They still don’t know how these sounds are made — popping air bubbles caused by vibrations in their circulatory system is suspecte­d — or who might be listening to them, but they are definitely there.

I listened to a recording of a stressed plant, and it sounds more like popping or clicking, but every story on the phenomenon refers to it as “screaming.” I know this because I’m pretty sure the “plants have feelings” crowd sent me links to those stories.

The screaming study added fuel to a fire that was already burning thanks to a 2015 book by Stefano Mancuso, who is a plant neurobiologist (for real). He argues that plants demonstrate intelligence through problem-solving and complex communication, evidence of sentience. And sentience, he says, suggests that plants have rights.

It’s getting more difficult to argue that plants don’t have feelings, so I’m considering changing my approach. I think from now on I’ll tell people that if we could understand plants, they would encourage us to cut off their damaged limbs or split them into pieces when they get too crowded. It’s not mean; it’s what they are asking for.

You’ll see. It can’t be long before scientists can translate those screams into words.

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