Plants complain about their lack of well-being

Nature Talk
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The article below tells about experiments that reveal plants emit sounds. It includes recordings of thirsty plants and plants being pruned.

I think I have a very vague memory from early childhood about not breaking branches off the tree. I think my mom was telling not to hurt the tree or it might cry. She was likely just trying to explain things in terms a toddler would understand, but maybe she was right all along.

I wonder if exceptional gardeners have some sense of these cries or other signals from plants?

The article should be unlocked.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/science/plant-sounds-stress.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fk4.Kzp7.DRctscAbJDk7&smid=url-share

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“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”

— Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts

Edit: Jack Handy is a humorist, not a horticulturist.

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?
This is the first sentence in that link

Researchers found that the plants they studied did not air their grievances randomly but rather made specific complaints that matched up with the type of stresses they were under.

Any gardener who walks thru their garden … gets diverted and distracted. Needs pruning. Must do that one next week. There’s a gap, what shall I plant there? Why does that looks so sad? Why does THAT look as if I never pruned it last week? We hear you.

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I feel like the headline overstates the actual findings, all listed sounds were popping noises, and these were thought to be caused by cavitation. It is possible that dehydration or cutting causes cavitation mechanically, and that this is not actually an attempt by the plant at expressing a grievance.

I don’t think my door is trying to communicate a lack of WD-40 when it squeaks, it’s just a mechanical issue that emits a sound, is a dehydrated plant cavitating any different? The article presents no evidence that the plants are actually trying to make sound, and that it is not just a mechanical effect.

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I’m fascinated by the defences Acacia trees have developed against giraffes. First line there are those huge thorns. Once under attack the trees will send tannins up to make themselves taste bad and interfere with giraffe digestion and then ethylene release spreads the message to the downwind trees triggering their tannin response. And ants on the tree are also set off. It makes me wonder what defences have evolved in other places especially here in Australia.

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Newspaper article is written in a ‘clickbaity’ style.
Here is a link to the published research article in Cell

Seeing a living and growing plant as a creaking door is an interesting spin. Especially for an iNatter :rofl:

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I didn’t mean to imply that plants are simply mechanical objects, and I do believe that they communicate, I have read articles that present evidence for that. The point I was trying to make is that this article is not presenting evidence that these sounds are communication.

I am very much living, but if I spend too much time at the computer without moving around, and my back cracks when I get up, that is simply a mechanical noise, and not at all the same as me saying “my back is stiff”. This article does not present evidence that these noises are communication rather than simply the plant version of crepitus.

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Agreed. But if a person sitting near you hears your joints making noise (crepitus) they might respond to that as a signal that they should get up and stretch or move around. Not that you intended to provide that information. And this study doesn’t provide evidence that neighboring plants are changing anything in response to sound. Not that they couldn’t be.

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The sound is certainly an indicator of an issue, I just take issue with the article implying that the plant is expressing some sort of feeling or trying to communicate something when it does not provide evidence for that

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The newspaper article is aimed at a popular audience.
I left a link to the Cell article, where you could, read the scientist’s version.

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I still think the lay version does not need to be so clickbaity

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To detect vibrations in the air or other medium as sound, a “listener” must have the apparatus to interpret it as such. Maybe plants can be affected by vibrations but not sure what in a plant’s anatomy could function as a detector.

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it ….”

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Easier for a human scientist to record ‘sounds’ than volatile chemicals which plants use to communicate. Or the fungal network between roots. ?
We cannot communicate in ‘spider’ but we know spiders can.

But less clickbait would be more interesting.

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FWIW, I think the story talked about how some insects interpreted the emissions, either choosing the plant as a host or choosing to leave it alone.

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https://www.adelaide.edu.au/stretton/news/list/2022/05/13/baby-oysters-follow-the-crackling-sound-of-snapping-shrimp

There’s no shortage of old invalid assumptions to challenge in this space :)

And Monica Gagliano showed plants could learn an association between a fan and the future location of a light source - but I don’t know of further work on what frequency spectrum from the fan the plants were responding to.

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Nardini et al 2024 nicely express your skepticism: https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(23)00382-5

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