A green invasion

We come to you this month with some alarming news. If you have read Russ Swan’s babble on p17 you will know there is no shortage of end-of-the-world scenarios for those of us schlepping around under the banner of Homo sapiens – but we think he has missed one.

In fact we all have. An army is amassing, one with frankly staggering erstwhile hidden abilities. And the real kicker is this; they have been slowly gathering forces right under our noses…and our lawn mowers, picnic blankets and secateurs.

The clandestine threat we speak of is not animal in nature, or geological or indeed mineral, but rather stem (…pun intended) from the vegetable kingdom. We think plants are poised to assert their dominance, rendering us all pathetic meat bags wandering around at their whim.

Overly dramatic? Us? Perhaps – but let us put it like this. Humans stole a march over our ancestral competitors based almost entirely on cognitive prowess. This basic facet allowed us to develop tools, harness fire and construct the wheel and continues to serve us today with, well, insert technology of choice here. We are, there is no denying, a clever bunch. But surely talk of ‘intelligence’ seems irrelevant when talking of a plant uprising? Well, two bits of research have come to our attention that worryingly suggest otherwise.

Firstly, it turns out we are not the only ones to have developed an internet. Researchers from the University of Aberdeen, the James Hutton Institute and Rothamsted Research have recently found evidence that, amazingly, plants seem to have evolved the ability to communicate via an underground network. Not of telephone wires or optic broadband fibres, but by an extensive network of fungi called mycorrhizae.

A new study, published in Ecology Letters, shows that these fungi aid in communication. By some clever use of broad bean plants and grow bags the team found that plants can use mycorrhizal networks to warn each other if they are under attack from aphids, such that those plugged in to the network can mount an early defence.  The relationship has always been thought of as symbiotic – the fungi get food from the plant – but what the plant got from the fungi has never been as clear. Now it seems as though their evolutionary role is, incredibly, as a kind of biological internet service provider.

Ok, that is all well and good you might say. Sure, plants can communicate with each other – but that communication is limited to a form of early warning of impending attack. It’s not like they can do, say, mathematics or anything…right?

Well this brings us neatly onto the second piece of evidence. Scientists from the John Innes Centre say they are ‘amazed’ to find that plants seem to have an inbuilt capacity to perform arithmetic calculation. Alarm bells should start ringing now surely?

Unbelievable as it may seem, their research suggests that in order to consume just the right amount of stored energy overnight (in the form of starch) plants actually calculate using division. Study leader Prof Alison Smith sums it up: "They're actually doing maths in a simple, chemical way - that's amazing, it astonished us as scientists to see that."

Fantastically, she then leads the resistance against the plants burgeoning confidence with what has to be one of our favourite quotes ever…bar none:  "This is pre-GCSE maths they're doing, but they're doing maths." Right, of course – ‘pre-GCSE maths’…well that’s ok then.

Despite the attempt to belittle the plants achievements, the fact remains that this is utterly staggering. The team think that mechanisms in the leaves measure the amount of starch and combine this with time data from the internal clock of the plant to work out the rate of starch consumption that is appropriate. Basically the plant divides the amount of starch by the time left before the sun rises and it can start photosynthesising once again.

To summarise: Plants can do maths and communicate via an underground symbiotic internet…we just don’t think it is possible to be overly dramatic about this. So, what now? Trade sanctions? UN resolutions? Unilateral military action? At the very least can someone PLEASE shout the phrase “Red Alert…go to Red Alert!”

Well – no. You see this is nothing new. Plants and animals have quietly been engaged in a 300 million year old battle to get the upper hand.  It was around that time herbivores first appeared on land and an evolutionary dance began with animals evolving to eat plants and plants evolving to elude their grizzly fate.

It’s a battle field out there – just remember that the next time you slip out for a spot of gardening…