Green Memory

A team led by Stanislaw Karpinski from Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland has found that plants as a whole possess a nervous system which is prominently similar to that of humans. The team found that plants remember and react to changes around them just like humans.

Researchers in order to demonstrate these characteristics used fluorescence imaging to gauge response of plants. For this, they exposed a single leaf of a plant to light and found that the entire plant reacted to it. The reaction was in the form of light-induced chemical reactions which lingered on even after the plant was placed in the dark. It demonstrated to scientists that plants remembered this encrypted information by using specific cells known as ‘bundle sheath cell’.

The research established the fact that plants have a nervous system which the research team suggests is used by them to stimulate protective chemical reactions and immunise themselves against pathogens.