Plant

This note is about plants.

Hall, Matthew. “How Plants Live: Individuality, Activity, and Self.” Environmental Philosophy 17, no. 2 (2021): 317–45. https://doi.org/10/ghr7kp.

What Are Plants?

Bouteau, François, Etienne Grésillon, Denis Chartier, Delphine Arbelet-Bonnin, Tomonori Kawano, František Baluška, Stefano Mancuso, Paco Calvo, and Patrick Laurenti. “Our Sisters the Plants? Notes from Phylogenetics and Botany on Plant Kinship Blindness.” Plant Signaling & Behavior 16, no. 12 (2021): 2004769. https://doi.org/10/gqdz34.

Plants are close relatives or kin of animals and humans. They diverged relatively recently and share a lot of properties and capabilities with other lifeforms. The tradition that sees them substantially different from animals is not supported by the recent evidence.

Bouteau, François, Etienne Grésillon, Denis Chartier, Delphine Arbelet-Bonnin, Tomonori Kawano, František Baluška, Stefano Mancuso, Paco Calvo, and Patrick Laurenti. “Our Sisters the Plants? Notes from Phylogenetics and Botany on Plant Kinship Blindness.” _Plant Signaling & Behavior _16, no. 12 (2021): 2004769. https://doi.org/10/gqdz34.

Instrumental Rationality

Cf. Intelligence

Reason (or instrumental rationality) is an organisms's

ability to implement problem-solving strategies
ability to use experience to adapt to changes

Gerber, Sophie, and Quentin Hiernaux. “Plants as Machines: History, Philosophy and Practical Consequences of an Idea.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 35, no. 1 (2022): 4. https://doi.org/10/gqdz3j.

Trewavas, Anthony. Plant Behaviour and Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Mancuso, Stefano, and Alessandra Viola. Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence. Washington: Island Press, 2015.

This is compatible with theories of minimal cognition that also stipulate that organisms, including bacteria, can obtain and process information and make decisions to regulate their behaviours.

Maher, Chauncey. Plant Minds: A Philosophical Defense. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Hiernaux, Quentin. Du comportement végétal à l’intelligence des plantes? Versailles Cedex: Éditions Quæ, 2020.

Hiernaux, Quentin. “Differentiating Behaviour, Cognition, and Consciousness in Plants.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 28, no. 1–2 (2021): 106–35.

"We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable—controlling their production mechanisms."

Bechtel, William, and Leonardo Bich. “Grounding Cognition: Heterarchical Control Mechanisms in Biology.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376, no. 1820 (2021): 20190751. https://doi.org/10/gk37fr.

Ways to Study Plants

Disciplines, subdisciplines, concepts, and search terms

Botany
Ecology
Traditional ecological knowledge
Critical plant studies
Vegetal geographies
Horticulture
Landscape architecture
Medicine
Environmental history
Ethnobotany
Archeohistory
Paleobotany
Vegetal history
Vegetal political ecology
Plant-human commoning 1
Vegetal labour (wood pellets vs the dead labour of coal) 2
Plant blindness (special issue 'Standing in the Shadow of Plant' on this)
Plant crime and floral ecoviolence 3
Ecological intellectual property 4
Relational health (cf. one health, wellbeing) 5
Plant performance (special issue)
Phytography, multispecies storytelling with plants 6

Philosophy and Interpretation

Hiernaux, Quentin. Du comportement végétal à l’intelligence des plantes? Versailles Cedex: Éditions Quæ, 2020.

Hiernaux, Quentin, and Benoît Timmermans, eds. Philosophie du végétal. Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2018.

Co-Dependence and Coevolution

With humans:

Cumo, Christopher. Plants and People: Origin and Development of Human-Plant Science Relationships. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2017.

In human culture:

Gibson, Prudence. The Plant Contract: Art’s Return to Vegetal Life. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Some connections between plants and others in the ecological communities are very old, two billion years. "...the roots of a balsam fir in Canada survive in poor soil only with the help of fungal partners. These links are nearly two billion years old: the fir's roots cling to rocks containing fossils of the first networked cells."

Haskell, David George. The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors. New York: Viking, 2017.

Vegetal Life

Vegetal life is a paradigm on the Earth. Plants have particular distinguishing capabilities, the most important being the ability to 'eat' sunlight directly.

Temporal Scales

Plants can live very short of very long lives. They can live relatively fast or very slow lives. For example, some mosses in Antarctica can grow not more than 1mm per year.

Antarctica's 'moss forests' are drying and dying (theconversation.com)

Trees have very long lives.

Stafford, Fiona J. The Long, Long Life of Trees. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Spatial Scales

From very small to very large.

Sites

From very hot to very cold and from very wet to very dry.

Plants Indoors

Phillips, Catherine, and Eily Schulz. “Greening Home: Caring for Plants Indoors.” Australian Geographer 52, no. 4 (2021): 373–89. https://doi.org/10/gpq8ck.

Ethics

Pouteau, Sylvie. “Beyond ‘Second Animals’: Making Sense of Plant Ethics.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 27, no. 1 (2014): 1–25. https://doi.org/10/f5stf4.

Hiernaux, Quentin. “The Ethics of Plant Flourishing and Agricultural Ethics: Theoretical Distinctions and Concrete Recommendations in Light of the Environmental Crisis.” Philosophies 6, no. 4 (2021): 91. https://doi.org/10/gqd39b.

Koechlin, Florianne. ‘The Dignity of Plants’. Plant Signaling & Behavior 4, no. 1 (2009): 78–79. https://doi.org/10/b7jw2x.

Fell, Jan, Pei-Yi Kuo, Travis Greene, and Jyun-Cheng Wang. ‘A Biocentric Perspective on HCI Design Research Involving Plants’. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2022. https://doi.org/10/gqvd3z.

Voice and Agency

Lawrence, Anna M. “Listening to Plants: Conversations Between Critical Plant Studies and Vegetal Geography.” Progress in Human Geography, 2021, 03091325211062167. https://doi.org/10/gnzjdq.

Ernwein, Marion. ‘From Undead Commodities to Lively Labourers: (Re)Valuing Vegetal Life, Reclaiming the Power to Design-with Plants’. In The Botanical City, edited by Matthew Gandy and Sandra Jasper, 237–42. Berlin: Jovis, 2020.

Gandy, Matthew, and Sandra Jasper, eds. The Botanical City. Berlin: Jovis, 2020.

Ernwein, Marion, Franklin Ginn, and James Palmer, eds. The Work That Plants Do: Life, Labour and the Future of Vegetal Economies. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021.

Ringle, Erik F. ‘Theorizing a Vegetal Epistemology: Trees, Timber, and Temporality in Forest Under Story’. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 28, no. 2 (2021): 505–25. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa090.

Cf. the notion of 'vegetal political ecology':

Fleming, Jake. “Toward Vegetal Political Ecology: Kyrgyzstan’s Walnut–Fruit Forest and the Politics of Graftability.” Geoforum 79 (2017): 26–35. https://doi.org/10/f9sgw2.

Needs, Capabilities, Plants as Persons

Like other organisms, plants can live well or badly. Cf. Justice, Capabilities.

Kallhoff, Angela. “Plants in Ethics: Why Flourishing Deserves Moral Respect.” Environmental Values 23, no. 6 (2014): 685–700. https://doi.org/10/gfspzc.

Plants as Actors

How can we think about plants as active beings, experts in their lives, co-designers and engineers?

Life as information can be the larger frame.

Life as meaningful in the evolutionary context is the next step.

Plant species that exist now are successful in that they have survived. That is they are good designers, engineers, members of communities, behaving individuals, etc. This is also true for large old individual plants.

As species, and individually, plants have been around for a while, they have seen a lot of change. As other forms of life, they can be older that the landscapes they inhabit. They managed to continue through various changes, thus they have knowledge, practices, solutions, (body plans, chemistry, communication, cognition, reproduction, etc.) that are of value to themselves and others (they provide services, create niches for others, keep carbon, regulate climate, act as primary energy-capturing beings, so they distribute energy to most other living beings as food, etc. etc. etc.). Plant ways are a repository of useful knowledge and practices.

Humans do and can benefit from what plants already do by letting them be. Plants deserve respect and support when they live for themselves. In addition, in many cases humans can/should help them to survive, thrive, move through and encounter upcoming heavily modified environments (cities, hard infrastructure, agriculture, etc.) that are increasingly predominating on the Earth surface. Further, it is pragmatically important to preserve what cannot survive as the valuable source of knowledge for all, etc.

Sensing, Sentience, Cognition, Knowledge

Linson, Adam, and Paco Calvo. “Zoocentrism in the Weeds? Cultivating Plant Models for Cognitive Yield.” Biology & Philosophy 35, no. 5 (2020): 49. https://doi.org/10/gnj2b7.

Linson, Adam, Aditya Ponkshe, and Paco Calvo. “On Plants and Principles.” Biology and Philosophy 36, no. 2 (2021).

Novoplansky, Ariel. ‘What Plant Roots Know?’ Mesenteric Organogenesis 92 (2019): 126–33. https://doi.org/10/gf4xbd.

Politics

Head, Lesley, Jennifer Atchison, Catherine Phillips, and Kathleen Buckingham. “Vegetal Politics: Belonging, Practices and Places.” Social & Cultural Geography 15, no. 8 (2014): 861–70. https://doi.org/10/gfvwx8.

Cf. Symbioculture, or "nurturing the lives of those in one’s ecology, including the beings one eats"

Smith, Andrew F. “Symbioculture: A Kinship-Based Conception of Sustainable Food Systems.” Environmental Philosophy, 2021. https://doi.org/10/gk5qbf.

Hall, Matthew. “Empathy for Plants.” Environmental Ethics 44, no. 2 (2022): 121–36. https://doi.org/10/gp4swb.

Labour

Also see the notes.

Ernwein, Marion, Franklin Ginn, and James Palmer, eds. The Work That Plants Do: Life, Labour and the Future of Vegetal Economies. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2021.

Ecomanagerialism used to see plants as “undead commodities” but now shifts to seeing them as “nonhuman laborers.” An understanding of urban ecological work as more-than-human.

Ernwein, Marion. “Bringing Urban Parks to Life: The More-Than-Human Politics of Urban Ecological Work.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111, no. 2 (2021): 559–76. https://doi.org/10/gqkgx5.

Design and Management

Pauli, Natasha, Cecily Maller, Luis Mata, Leila Farahani, Libby Porter, Lauren Arabena, Melanie Davern, et al. “Perspectives on Understanding and Measuring the Social, Cultural and Biodiversity Benefits of Urban Greening.” Discussion paper. Melbourne: Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, 2020.

Cooke, Benjamin, Ani Landau-Ward, and Lauren Rickards. “Urban Greening, Property and More-Than-Human Commoning.” Australian Geographer 51, no. 2 (2019): 169–88. https://doi.org/10/gf7wq7.

Gatto, Gionata. “Design as Multispecies Encounter: On Plant Participation and Agency in and Through Speculative Design.” PhD Thesis, Loughborough University, 2020. https://doi.org/10/fb5d.

Naturalistic

Dunnett, Nigel, and James Hitchmough, eds. The Dynamic Landscape Design, Ecology and Management of Naturalistic Urban Planting. London: Taylor & Francis, 2008.

Cultural Meaning of Plants

Braverman, Irus. Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel/Palestine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Losses

Used to be 6 trillion trees at the end of the Holocene, only some 3 trillion remain, 80% of biomass on the planet (from the climate report of biomass on the course of human history). The challenge is to restore the dissipative capacity that human activities reduced by half.

"For example, populations of large old trees are plummeting in intensively grazed landscapes in California, Costa Rica, and Spain, where such trees are predicted to disappear within 90 to 180 years. In south-eastern Australia, millions of hectares of grazing lands are projected to support less than 1.3% of the historical densities of large old trees within 50 to 100 years."

Lindenmayer, David B., William F. Laurance, and Jerry F. Franklin. “Global Decline in Large Old Trees.” Science 338, no. 6112 (December 7, 2012): 1305–6. https://doi.org/10/gc3d8n.

Resources

An interesting exhibition

Green Modernism – The new view on plants

References

In Defense of Plants

Subnotes

Footnotes

Cooke, Benjamin, and Ruth Lane. “Plant–Human Commoning: Navigating Enclosure, Neoliberal Conservation, and Plant Mobility in Exurban Landscapes.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 6 (2018): 1715–31. https://doi.org/10/gdg5fj.˄
Palmer, James. “Putting Forests to Work? Enrolling Vegetal Labor in the Socioecological Fix of Bioenergy Resource Making.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111, no. 1 (2021): 141–56. https://doi.org/10/gjhbmd.˄
Stoett, Peter, and Delon Alain Omrow. Spheres of Transnational Ecoviolence: Environmental Crime, Human Security, and Justice. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.˄
Jefferson, David J. Towards an Ecological Intellectual Property: Reconfiguring Relationships Between People and Plants in Ecuador. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020.˄
Elton, Sarah. “Relational Health: Theorizing Plants as Health-Supporting Actors.” Social Science & Medicine 281 (2021): 114083. https://doi.org/10/gkbvfj.˄
McEwan, Cheryl. “Multispecies Storytelling in Botanical Worlds: The Creative Agencies of Plants in Contested Ecologies.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2022, 25148486221110756. https://doi.org/10/gqkg3p.˄

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