I was thinking that we are always taught that trees automatically grow towards light and react to the environment, much like animals or even humans do, but the difference is that animals and humans have brains. So I was wondering, what tells trees to do the things that they do, such as transporting water and protecting themselves from predators and reproducing? Ex. I, as a man (this is a fucked up example), give birth, then a forest fire kills my baby. I then think "Don't leave my baby in a forest fire", but a certain species of tree has pine cones that only open in a temperature only obtainable through a forest fire. It wasn't just luck that the trees dropped heat proof pine cones, nor was it luck that any other species of plant learned to adapt to their environment. Saying that, how can the plants learn, they don't have a brain to tell them that certain things are bad for them, so how is it possible? Or if anyone could tell me what to google it would be greatly appreciated, because all I can find is questions asking if trees feel things, not how. As for the tag, I put in "tree" and "tree oral sex" came up, so it's not like I'm not going to use that as a tag.
read up on "druids" although it is very hard to find any info on them. they looked to trees for all kinds of stuff.
I think trees and other plants are basically programmed to do what they do, rather than having a brain to tell it what to do. The will to live is genetically imprinted into all living things, and each plant and animal has adapted to their environment in some way, in order to preserve their own life, and the lives of future generations. Take the cannabis plant as an example... It has several techniques to ensure it's survival. When a cannabis plant is not getting enough light, it will start to put out leaves as fast as it can, all of the leaves will either be 1-3 finger leaves, whereas a plant with plenty of light take it's time to produce 5, 7, 9, and even 11 blade leaves. Another example is how a unpolinated plant will hermaphrodite at the very end of it's flowering cycle, as a last-ditch effort to produce offspring... I guess what I'm trying to point out is that plants, although striving for self-preservation, don't think, persay, They are just programmed to respond to conditions. Now, what force of nature, or who programmed them is still one of the most highly debated subjects of all time. Although we have some of that automatic programming that keeps our hearts beating, and our lungs breathing. It's our thinking that gives us the freedom to make choices, either for self-preservation, or for self-destruction. Plants don't commit suicide, they always go out fighting as hard as they possibly can, because it isin't a choice for them. just my $.02
The mechanism is surprisingly simple in most plants. Rule one (usually!), grow towards the light. Rule two, the highest branch is the lead stem, it grows tallest, lushest and fastest. It knows which is the lead stem because the higher the branch is the more it contains a chemical that signals the plant to feed that branch more than others. All plants are of course photo-sensitive, and many of their cells will either contract or expand in response to it, moving a plant into light and bending its stem and leaves. When I train my Bonsai to look, say, like they've grown on a wind-swept cliff, I choose any branch that I want to be the lead stem and tilt the plant container, or wire the branch, so that it's the highest. Within a month or so the plant assumes that it's the main stem and not the one it originally had, and taht branch will now be the lushest on the tree. I then turn the plant around so that the other branches that I want to move in one particular direction will face the sun, and they all grow toward it, simply because of cell contraction and expansion. MelT
thanks guys, i guess we will just never know what tells them to do what they do, unless one of us discovers it in a crazy drug trip
"It wasn't just luck that the trees dropped heat proof pine cones, nor was it luck that any other species of plant learned to adapt to their environment." It is simply that over a long stretch of time, those with different characteristics survive better and therefor the plants evolve. Evolution doesn't happen quickly. For example, one tree wouldn't have put down heat-proof pine cones one day, but it would have slowly happened over thousands of years and each tree with a slightly more heat-proof cone would survive. It is a very slow, chain reaction of survival.
you are confusing the results of evolution, which ntakes places over many generations and results in things such as the heat proof pine cone... and the life of a single plant... a single plant may think, but it cannot adapt to its enviroemtn outside of what its genetic code, and the flexibility therin, allows plants are as alive as animals are, just a different sense of awareness...
this is now on my list of shit to think about next time i have a large amount of mushrooms edit: WHY THE HELL is the tag "Tree oral sex"???????
Errrrr....didn't the above postings tell you exactly why they grow as they do? >>So I was wondering, what tells trees to do the things that they do, such as transporting water and protecting themselves from predators and reproducing? They don't do it consciously, it all happens through natural selection. a plant isn't conscious and making decisions, any more than our fingernails make a decision to grow. MelT
all plants aren't the same at all. it's actually called tropism which is the way the plant grows. yes, some do grow TOWARDS the light, but some don't. some grow away from the light etc etc. plants are some of the smartest life forms out there imo.
It is not unreasonable to think that trees & plants are intelligent when you observe how they behave. Some really good examples of this would be plants that mimic female insects to attract the males so they may cross pollinate. How the hell did a plant end up looking like a wasp? And if it did not look like a wasp, it would not continue to survive. But really, features like these fit the model of evolution perfectly (as mentioned briefly above). When you take a time scale of about 425 million years (instance of first land plants), and combine it with a countless number of different plant species that ever existed, only the plants that behaved for the benefit of their own survival would survive. The ones that didn't would have a very brief existence. That is why the plants we see today can appear to know what they are doing it is only a product of millions of years of trial and error.
Do we have to think to have our skulls protect our brains? Do we have to think when our gametes form zygotes? Must we use our brains in order for osmosis, turgor pressure, etc. to occur?
i think stars where one of the first forms of life... people think crazy things that may or may not be true... its called life
i read once these guys were making a test with plants : they put a sismograph (that device wich reads earthquakes and shakes on the ground) to work near 2 plants, then a guy came with some scissors and cruely killed the plant near the other one, and then the other day when the guy came near the 2nd plant it started to shake, like if it had feelings or whatever . glad to share, srry for my english, its getting rusty.
they dont think they adapt like every other living thing does. the enviroment is always changing, therefore living organisms must change to survive, thats how its always been