MORE than 27 million of us Brits enjoy gardening – and with studies showing it improves your mental health and fitness, there are more reasons than ever to get your hands dirty.
But did you know that the plants within your reach secretly hide a host of superpowers?
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Not only have they evolved into half a million species that thrive in every ecosystem on the planet, they have also devised some of nature’s most impressive adaptations to ensure they reign supreme.
And all this while keeping in mind that they can’t actually move.
The new book The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger takes you to a world where plants can count, communicate, and have a concept of time.
Here are twenty crazy ways plants will surprise you.
1. When Cress finds himself next to his brothers, he rearranges his leaves in two days to avoid shading them.
two. The roots of pea shoots appeared to be able to hear water flowing through sealed pipes and grow toward them.
3. Lima beans and tobacco can react to an attack by chewing insects by summoning the insects’ specific predators to attack them.
4. There is a specific tomato that secretes a chemical that causes hungry caterpillars to stop devouring its leaves and eat each other.
5. Japanese knotweed is one of the most invasive plants on the planet – just a fingernail-sized root fragment left behind can regenerate the entire plant.
6. The Peruvian Biquila Trifoliata plant can spontaneously transform into the shape of any plant next to it.
7. It was recently discovered that carnivorous plants evolved to hunt in packs – collaborating to capture insects allows them to attract larger prey.
8. Sunflowers are known as allelopathic, meaning they secrete chemicals into the soil when resources are low to prevent seedlings of other plants from germinating.
9. The fruit of the Brazilian plant Spigelia genufluxa bends over and plants its own seed in the ground – burying it in the soft moss in which it grows.
10. Plants can develop stinging spines, spikes, and hairs, developed with remarkable precision, to pierce the flesh or exoskeleton of any mammal or insect that may be their primary threat.
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11. Some plants can secrete sticky sugar to attract and then immobilize their antagonists, whose hungry mouths become trapped and closed.
12. When a leaf feels nibbled on, it can produce a cloud of airborne chemicals that instruct the plant’s more distant branches to activate their immune systems, producing even more repellent chemicals to deter the entry of aphids and other herbivorous insects. .
13. Several types of plants have been found to identify a caterpillar’s species by detecting the compounds in its saliva and then synthesizing the exact compounds to summon its predator.
The parasitic wasps then gently arrive to care for the caterpillars.
14. Plants are fully aware of our contact with them and will reorganize their lives to respond to such treatment.
‘Remove threats’
15. Beach Evening Primrose increases the sweetness of its nectar three minutes after being exposed to an audio recording of bee flight.
16. NASA’s Poissonians have the ability to store and recall information – they remember the time intervals between bee visits and anticipate the next time when your pollinator would likely arrive.
17. Cornish mallow, a pink flowering plant, turns its leaves hours before sunrise to face the horizon in exactly the direction it expects the sun to rise.
18. Bittersweet nightshade, a plant in the same family as tomatoes, potatoes and tobacco, secretes sugary nectar to recruit ants as bodyguards.
The ants, hooked by the sticky syrup that the plant exudes for them, obediently tear off the larvae of bittersweet’s mortal enemy, the flea beetle, that are clinging to the plant’s stem.
19. If yellow monkey flowers are exposed to predators, they will produce babies with defensive spikes on their leaves.
20. Wild radishes that have survived a scourge of destructive caterpillars will also produce baby radishes with extra-bristle leaves, as well as being pre-loaded with defensive chemicals to better ward off threats.
- Excerpted from The Light Eaters, published by William Collins at £22 on 9th May
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