10 February 2014

What a Plant Knows

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I've written before about how much I enjoyed Daniel Chamovitz's book What a Plant Knows, in a short review of the book. I also wrote a Five Fact Friday (now Friday Five) series on plants and their senses:
Since then the folks over at Coursera have built a seven week online course around the book. I actually started and enjoyed the course last year, but I had a bad time illness-wise half way through the course, so had to drop out. What I managed to complete was really interesting, so I've signed up for the next presentation of the course on Oct 26th 2014. If you'd like to join me and studying this course, then you can sign up on the Cousera course page here.

Now to the real purpose of this blog post! Last week Daniel Chamovitz delivered a talk based on the content of his book at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. I really enjoyed the talk and hope you will too. Just click play!


While a lot of people would urge against anthropomorphising plants, I think using human senses that it's a great way to get people to look at plants in a different way. It's only when we look at plants and consider the world from their point of view and in their time scale, that we can truly appreciate how wonderful they truly are. In my most humble opinion, any way we can get more people to appreciate and study plants, is worth pursuing. Of course misinformation wouldn't be the way to go, but that's not what Daniel or his approach is about.

If you've read the book, studied the course, watched the talk; I'd like to hear from you! What do you think about this fascinating way of looking at how plants perceive the world around them? Can you recommend any books that go a bit deeper? I hope to hear from you in the comments below.

6 comments:

  1. joefloggers10 February 2014 at 18:41

    I didn't know what anthropomorphising plants was until I googled it. I had a fair idea though. nice post.

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    1. Tim10 February 2014 at 21:41

      lol Mike! I like to throw a multi-syllable word in there once in a while to check people are paying attention :)
      I'm glad you liked the post.

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  2. Lou Mary10 February 2014 at 19:44

    The book looks really interesting! If I get some spare time (unlikely!) I will listen to the lecture. I thought you might enjoy this article if you can access it: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129540.700-the-borneo-hills-diet-pitcher-plants-strange-prey.html?page=3#.UvABrbRCBvg
    I hope you are well! Sorry I have been so absent from blogging!

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    1. Tim10 February 2014 at 21:41

      Luckly, I'm studying with the OU at present so have access to quite a few things, including this amazing article. I'd heard about the relationship with a species of pitcher and the tree shrew, but this is the first time I'd heard about the relationship of a pitcher species and a bat - truly astounding. Thank you for sharing this with me.
      Don't apologise, I'm sure you've been doing some amazing real life things that you'll be blogging about :)

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    2. Lou Mary10 February 2014 at 21:45

      Glad you enjoyed it :) I have posted about my trainee position recently :)

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    3. Tim11 February 2014 at 00:13

      Apologies, I've been a bit slow catching up with reading blogs. I've now read and commented on your fab post :)

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