ANDRZEJ KRAUZE
In 2007, plant biologists passionately argued the meaning of the word “neurobiology.” The year before, an article published in Trends in Plant Science had announced the debut of a new scientific field: plant neurobiology. The authors suggested that electrical potentials and hormone transport in plants bore similarities to animal neuronal signaling, an idea that raised the hackles of many a botanist. Thirty-six plant scientists signed a letter briskly dismissing the new field, calling the comparison between plant signaling—intricate though it is—and animal signaling intellectually reckless. “Plant neurobiology,” they wrote, was no more than a “catch-phrase.”
Upon close examination, the “neurobiology” debate did not center on very much scientific disagreement. Researchers in both camps agreed on the general facts: plants did not have neurons, nor did they have brains, but they did possess complicated, poorly understood means of responding to the environment that deserved rigorous study. The community was conflicted over how to talk about these abilities and whether the semantic umbrella of words such as “feel,” “choose,” and “intelligence” should extend to plants.
The rhetoric surrounding the argument has since cooled, but the debate was never entirely resolved. And in 2016, Monica Gagliano of the ...
