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June 3, 2006 "The Private Life Of Plants" is one of my favorite documentaries. What are plants? I mean, what are they really? I used to spend lots of time thinking about plants and how different they seem from animals. I used to annoy my friends with what seemed to them ridiculous questions, for example, "why aren't we disgusted when we rip a leaf from a tree? Imagine ripping a paw from a raccoon". I used to play with plants when I was much younger. I would mash up plants until I had a nice green soup. Or, I would take dandelion stems and use them as straws and connect them together and turn them into squares and triangles. I used to grow beans and try adding all kinds of ingredients to the soil to see what would happen. I used to fantasize about feeding flies to Venus flytraps, but when I finally bought my first specimen, it soon died. Apparently, the fastest way to wreck their delicate "mouths" is by tricking the plant into closing them over and over and over. Resetting the trap takes the plant a fair amount of energy and each leaf is only good for a few attempts. Anyway, when I came across this series a few years ago, it brought back waves of nostalgia. This documentary is why I love science and nature. It's beautiful, surprising, and quite frankly, creepy. It's loaded with time lapse photography, so you can see the plants move. Plants don't have muscles, so they move mainly by growing. Some also move by releasing stored energy in various forms, either chemical or mechanical, as in a loaded spring. In any case, it's easy to take them for granted, but as the excellent narrator and host David Attenborough says in the series, plants have very much the same problems as animals - they have to find mates, find enough food, compete for territory and defend against enemies. Plants fight with each other. Plants attack each other. Plants attack animals. Plants use animals. Plants leech from other plants. Plants cooperate together and with other life forms, most notably fungus, insects and birds. Like animals, plants are life forms which ruthlessly do what's required to survive and procreate. The time lapse photography shows all manner of plants racing and competing for space and sun when a tree falls or is cut down. It shows vines moving amongst other plants, like slithering vampires, searching for the right victim. Once found, it attaches and sucks. It shows other vines strangling trees. Sped up, most flowers look like bottom-dwelling sea creatures. They way they react to light and follow the sun looks like sea anemones moving against the ocean current. Two movers really struck me. One is a bramble that runs along the ground, popping out thorns opposite the direction of growth for grip. It actually "swings" its front from side to side, seemingly feeling its way along. When it finds the right spot, it inserts roots, claims a new area and continues. Another plant actually "feels" around for crevices and plants its own seeds, thereby climbing up the sides of cliffs and castles, one nook per generation. The outdoors are now a different experience for me. All around me, these non-animals are fighting, loving and moving on a time scale virtually invisible to the rest of us. Even the most lowly weed is every bit as interesting and animated as a Venus flytrap. It's like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics - another universe right under your nose, but in a different realm. Or, looked at another way, plant life is downright alien to animal life: no brains, no nerves, no muscles, yet every bit as alive as we and with similar concerns. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. I now have a blog that I will start to increasingly maintain and update. Here is the link: fredsuberview.blogspot.com/ About my personal background and life: I was born, I got some education, worked, ate, and had some kids. It seems I like to write � something that was unknown to me until relatively recently...How's that for detail? ;) Hate mail is welcome unless you are from the Army Of God. Please! It's not that I mind seeing pictures of aborted fetuses in my inbox, but once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all... Email: dahlek65@gmail.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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