Is Plant Intelligence Real?

The goal of this blog is to create a list of what I call super facts. Super facts are important and true facts that nevertheless are very surprising to many, misunderstood, or disputed among the public. They are special facts that we all can learn something important from. However, I also make posts that are not super facts but feature other interesting information, such as this book review and book recommendation.

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger – May 7, 2024

Below I am listing the four versions of this book. I bought the hardback version.

  • Hardback –  Publisher : Harper (May 7, 2024), ISBN-10 : 0063073854, ISBN-13 : 978-0063073852, 304 pages, item weight : 2.31 pounds, dimensions : 6 x 0.92 x 9 inches. It costs $ 19.90 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • Paperback –  Publisher : Harper Perennial (May 13, 2025), ISBN-10 : 0063073862, ISBN-13 : 978-0063073869, 304 pages, item weight : 11.2 ounces, dimensions : 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches. It costs $15.99 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • Kindle –  Publisher : Harper (May 7, 2024), ASIN : B0CFM4SMPF, 298 pages, it costs $ 14.99on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • • Audiobook – Publisher : Harper (May 7, 2024), ASIN : B0CJWQ6X99, Listening length : 10 hours and 56 minutes. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
The front cover features a plant on a black background, the title and author of the book and the phrase “How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth”. | The front cover of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger.
The front cover of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardback version of the book.

Amazon’s Description of the Book

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024 • TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 • New York Magazine’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024 • Smithsonian’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year •  A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Scientific American,New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly • An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize • Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History

“A masterpiece of science writing.” ―Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

“Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.” ―Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

“Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!” ―Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction

Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of natural history and popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom, “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.” (The New Yorker)

It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit―a fascinating display of plant behavior and sensory abilities, to name just a few remarkable talents.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In this captivating exploration of plant intelligence, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how insights into plant communication influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for―if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants―and our own place―in the natural world, tackling the enthralling question of plant consciousness along the way.

This is my five-star review for The Light Eaters

It is a truly great and fact filled book

Plant Behavior and Communication is Real. What about Plant Intelligence?

This is a very interesting book that describes the ways plants behave and communicate via chemicals, fungus, sound, electric signals and light. Many plants even exhibit memory functions and are able mimic the look of other plants from a distance. A leaf is the only thing in our known world that can manufacture sugar out of materials, light and air, that have never been alive. They can produce complex chemicals, like caffeine, that humans and animals can’t produce. If weighed, plants would amount to 80% of Earth’s living matter.

Plants can regrow virtually any amputated part. Some plants inject poisons into the ground around their roots to prevent anything else from growing nearby. Plants can recognize and protect their kin. Many plants will rearrange their leaves to avoid shading siblings. One of the points of the book is that we may have underestimated plants.

The book also discusses the possibility that plants may have a type of intelligence, perhaps even consciousness, depending on how you define it. This is a philosophical discussion. It should be noted that there was a very popular book in the 1970’s that made outlandish and pseudoscientific claims about plants. In the long run this book created a lot of skepticism towards claims within botany that seemed far-fetched despite collaborating evidence. The author laments this conservatism at the same time as she understands it.

There is a problem with getting unconventional work published in botany, at the same time the arduous peer-review process is an essential safeguard against false paths.

However, it has been established that plants do a lot of amazing things, and we are just beginning to realize the extent of plant behavior and communication. Some examples are, plants can communicate with each other even when they are too far apart to be passing information through their roots (perhaps pheromonal substances).

Plants produce electrical impulses and seem to have nodes at the tips of their roots that serve as local command centers. Plants can react to an attack of munching insects by summoning those insects’ specific predators to come and pick them up. They can perceive gravity, but we don’t know how. Primrose increases the sweetness of its nectar within three minutes if you play an audio recording of honeybee flight to it. Pea plants and many other plants grow their roots toward the sound of running water.

Other examples are, Tomatoes make thirty-five sounds per hour when drought stressed. Goldenrod can sense the volatile signals of nearby gall-forming flies and jump-start its immune system before the flies even make contact. Researchers who played tones at different frequencies to alfalfa sprouts for two hours saw that they increased the plants’ content of vitamin C. Plants can hear the caterpillars or pick up the vibrations they cause. Trichomes allow plants to sense the footsteps of moths and caterpillars.

Nasa poissoniana can store and recall information. It can remember the time intervals between bumble bee visits and anticipate the next time their pollinator was likely to arrive. Bittersweet nightshade recruit ants as bodyguards. Cornish mallow, a pink-flowered plant, will turn its leaves hours before sunrise to face the horizon in exactly the direction its expects the sun to rise. A common vine in this rainforest was capable of spontaneously morph into the shape of almost any plant it grew beside.

Plant mimicry is not that unusual. Scientists have long observed that virtually all plants are highly sensitive to touch of any kind and will change their growth accordingly. The book features several dozen more amazing examples of plant behavior, communication, sensing, and forms of memory including generational memory.

The book also delves into some other topics such as the importance of microbes for both plants and animals, including humans. Microbes influence our immune systems, our smells, and our attractiveness to mosquitos. Emerging research suggests that they may play a role in autism, depression, anxiety, and possible even who we are attracted to. The author also notes that pollution steadily filling the air appears to sabotage plants ability to send and interpret each other’s signals.

This is a book that is filled with interesting and perhaps even shocking information, and it certainly made me more interested in plants and botany. I think the book made the outlandish ideas about plant intelligence and conscience appear almost plausible. Plants are all around us and they are more interesting than I thought. The book is also well written and well organized. I should say that I did not think the first three chapters were very interesting, but it got better the further I read. I highly recommend this book.

The back cover features a picture of a plant on a black background and praise for the book. | The back cover of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger.
The back cover of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardback version of the book.
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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

72 thoughts on “Is Plant Intelligence Real?”

  1. I have read this book, Thomas, and learned a lot about plants from it. Thanks for reminding me of some of the phenomena it discusses. As a gardener, I’m interested in plants. I suspect they do have something analogous to what we call intelligence.

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    1. Thank you so much Audrey. It is a truly fascinating book. I have not paid enough attention to botany and I learned a lot from this book. Plants are a lot more capable than I thought. It is great that you are a gardener. We are going to plant tomatoes in our backyard soon.

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  2. Fascinating Thomas. This reminds me of The Findhorn Garden, a spiritual community in Scotland. The plants grew like they were on steroids because of the TLC.
    Fascinating findings “Some plants inject poisons into the ground around their roots to prevent anything else from growing nearby. Plants can recognize and protect their kin. Many plants will rearrange their leaves to avoid shading siblings.”
    Thanks for sharing. The cover is amazing! 🤩 🌹🌸🌺

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    1. Thank you so much for your kind words Cindy. Yes this book is filled with amazing plant discoveries and it is based on peer review (hard examining of accuracy and repeated testing) and not hyperbole.

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  4. Thank you very much for your review and other information, Thomas. I have read reviews of this book before and have been intending to find a copy – it’s on my list – but haven’t done so yet. Your review has encouraged me to get going on that!

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  5. Two things need to happen for plants to enter the next phase of their evolving intelligence:

    They need to learn how to talk back to people who talk to plants.

    They need to learn to run away from people and animals who try to eat them.

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        1. It is fascinating and yet this is a book that is based on peer reviewed and reproduced research. I am saying that because there is a lot of sensationalistic pseudoscientific books out there making similar sounding claims that are not based on science. Some even claiming that plants can read people’s thoughts.

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  7. Oh, wow, Thomas! What a great review of what seems to be a truly fascinating book! I had no idea, for example, that plants can inject poisons into the ground around their roots to prevent anything else from growing nearby, or that they can recognize and protect their kin. It seems they’re able to defend and protect in unforeseen ways, and, like you say, are underestimated. The importance of microbes is another area that intrigues me, especially since they seem to affect humans, too. The role they play in depression, etc. is particularly interesting. Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful review, Thomas! I’ll add this book to my reading list for sure and can’t wait to start learning more about this topic! 🌲🌱

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    1. Thank you so much for your very kind words Ada. You are right, this book is filled with interesting facts and discoveries. I should say I only mentioned a small portion of the fascinating facts in this book (the review was long enough). There is a lot more. I should also mention that this book is based on peer reviewed studies and research, which means that the claims have been harshly vetted and confirmed by multiple scientists. It is not hyperbole.

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  9. Hi Thomas
    In the 70s we all discussed “The Secret Life of Plants” by Peter Tompkins. We still have it in our library and just recently Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entangled Life” was a seller. Time and again, non-fiction writers take up this topic and present it as something groundbreakingly new. Of course, it always is a little bit different, but it’s essentially the same idea. Nevertheless it’s worth reading.
    Thanks for this great review
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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    1. Thank you Klausbernd. I should say there is a very important difference between The Secret Life of Plants and The Light Eaters. In my review I wrote “It should be noted that there was a very popular book in the 1970’s that made outlandish and pseudoscientific claims about plants.” I did not mention the book by name but it was “The Secret Life of Plants”. According to the author and the scientists interviewed by the author, The Secret Life of Plants was not based on peer reviewed and carefully vetted research and it got a lot wrong. This created a shadow over this kind of research, making it hard for many to take this kind of research seriously. A lot of scientists are upset about this. The big difference between The Secret Life of Plants and the Light Eaters is that Light Eaters basis its claims on carefully/harshly vetted research and confirmed by multiple scientists., whilst The Secret Life of Plants features a lot of unsubstantiated claims that set botany back.

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    2. I should maybe give some examples. The Secret Life of Plants falsely claimed plants possess telepathy, featured experiments that could not be replicated, and falsely claimed that plants have the ability to detect human thoughts using polygraphs. It promoted the idea that plants have human-like consciousness. It was pseudo-scientific.

      This book Light Eaters features dozens, maybe hundreds of amazing claims that are based on peer reviewed studies and replicable experiments. It is not pseudo-scientific. It does discuss the possibility of plant intelligence and eludes the possibility of a form of plant consciousness, but not human-like consciousness. When the author brings this up, she makes it clear that it is speculation and philosophy, not fact or science. That is a very important distinction between the two books. Maybe I did not discuss that enough in my review. In fact, I did not even mention the book by name. Sorry, this got lengthy but I just wanted to explain.

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      1. Hi Thomas
        Thank you for explaining.
        We are not biologists just laymen. And like most of the readers we not that interested in the secret life of the light easters. In the 70s it was in, but it seems to me now it isn’t.
        Thanks again
        The Fab Four of Cley
        🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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        1. Thank you so much Klaus. That book, the secret life of plants, did a lot of damage to the reputation of this kind of botany (as this book explains). However, the topic is getting a lot of attention again and a book like this, which is scientific and not pseudoscientific will probably have a different impact. It has become very popular.

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    1. Ha ha you are right. However, the intelligence and consicence part are speculation and philosophy. The claims about what plants can do, is however, based on carefully vetted and rpeated peer reviewed research.

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      1. I’ve read articles about plants using fungi to communicate with each other across their root system. Kinda like an underground Internet! Or actually, maybe more like an underground Gopher, if anyone remembers Gopher …

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  11. Thank you for the fascinating post, Thomas. I’ve read other investigations into whether or not plants communicate and think. There is definitely some interesting evidence that both happen, even though it’s not on a level that humans can intuitively observe. It certainly helps us as we consider what is meant by communication and cognition.

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    1. Thank you so much David, I should say that pseudo-scientific books have been written in this area, which have given books like this one a bad name. However, this book is based on peer reviewed and reproduced research (and it is still amazing without hyperbole). She references more than 250 peer reviewed studies. I should also say that when she speaks of intelligence, she is not referring to human-like intelligence but the ability of plants to change fairly rapidly in seemingly clever ways in response to a changing environment. She makes it clear that when you talk about plant intelligence and possibly plant consciousness this is philosophy and not science.

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      1. You make very good points here. And yes, I think understanding what actually constitutes “intelligence” is a very interesting scientific question and one that has typically been approached from a largely human-centric point of view. Of course we currently live in an era where “Artificial Intelligence” is very much part of the landscape, but I’m not sure how much “intelligence” those algorithms actually exhibit. Some of those programs are good mimics of human intelligence, but do they actually “comprehend” their environment. A plant can survive on its own. If humans were gone, would machine intelligence survive? I don’t think it’s clear that it could.

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        1. David, those are some very interesting thoughts. Defining what we mean by intelligence is certainly a difficult task we have not sufficiently explored. I should say that I brought this up (and the author brought this up) because there are a lot of pseduoscientific books out there that approaches the subject in a non-scientific way. This book references 250+ peer reviewed science publications unlike the books that claim that plants can read people’s minds (have ESP) and feature unreproducible experiments.

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  12. Fascinating! I knew about trees, but not so much other plants. We are just beginning to understand so much about life on this precious and diverse planet. Thank you for being part of our enlightenment!

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  13. I enjoyed reading all about this and about the book. I do remember and have read the 1970s book about plants. I remember the saying ‘plants are like people’. I’m glad this book has the backing experiments and all. I know I talk to my plants and give them names. Maybe they like it. School kids almost always have a science class where some have two plants, and they either talk nice to one and talk bad to the other, or play harsh music to one and nice music to another to compare how they grow. Thanks for the review 🙂

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    1. Thank you so much Barbara. I think that the book you mentioned, is likely The Secret Life of Plants, which did a lot of damage to the reputation of this kind of botany (as this book explains) because of the pseudoscience (plants can read human thoughts), hypebole, and unreproducable experiments. This book is based on peer reviewed science and repeatable/reproducible science. A lot has been discovered since the 1970’s. No need to embellish.

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  14. It is amazing how you can walk by things everyday and not really think much about it only to realize from reading things like this, everything has a system, connected, communicates. How thigs survive and adapt. This was great and I love the picture of the dog!

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    1. Yes I agree. There’s a lot going on that you are unaware of. The dog / puppy on the right hand side is our Leonberger puppy at the age of three months. His name was Bronco. If you click on it you’re taken to my Leonberger blog.

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    1. People assume plants don’t have intelligence just because they don’t have brains.
      Almost all people think that emotions and the experience of pain requires a brain, which plants do not have, neither do bacteria or fungi.

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      2. Yes you are right World Questioner. No brain and no neurons, but it is interesting that they still use electrical signals and use the same chemicals as animals to transmit those signals, but there are no neurons.

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    2. Yes that intelligence can come in many forms is a very interesting idea that the book brought up. It was speculative, which the author admitted, but plant communication and behavior is so impressive that the thought needs to be there.

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    1. Thank you so much Priscilla. I have not read Lab Girl but I will do that. Thank you so much for the recommendation. I’ve read another book by Hope Jahren, The Story of More, which was great, but I gave it four stars instead of five because I did not think she gave nuclear power a fair shake.

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  17. Hi Thomas. Wow, what an informative and interesting review. I find it fascinating. Now I understand better why people talk to their plants. Maybe they can hear too? 😊

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  18. This book sounds fascinating, Thomas. Thanks for your review and recommendation. I feel this way about trees, especially when we walk through redwoods, so why not plants too? Humans can’t be the only intelligent species. And they’re not always intelligent anyway. 🙂

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        1. That is perfectly OK. I do that sometimes too. Not with this book though. I was a bit annoyed during the first three chapters but I kept going and then while reading the fourth chapter, I realized, this is going to be good so I stayed with it.

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    1. Yes you are right. I was listening to a botanist talking about these issues and he said that maybe it is possible that plants are sentient in some sense, but they cannot feel pain. Pain is a survival adaptation that causes you to withdraw and run away from danger. Plants cannot do that so they have no use for pain, so it never evolved.

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    1. Thank you for the suggestion Ana. I am familiar with that book but unfortunately The Secret Life of Plants was not based on peer reviewed and carefully vetted research and it got a lot wrong. It is considered pseudo science by botanists. This book on the other hand is based on peer reviewed research, so you can trust it.

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