![]() A kind of orchid, for example, convincingly mimics the scent and shape of a female thynnid wasp. Mimicry is another one, and it crops up all over the plant world. (Flytraps can apparently count they only close on prey that bump trigger hairs inside them within about 20 seconds of each other.)Īll of these behaviors help plants survive life immobile and, uh, fly in the face of any notion that plants are insipid. And there are several hundred carnivorous plants, including sundews and Venus flytraps, which have elaborate mechanisms for capturing and digesting insects. The telegraph plant, for example, will adjust its leaves so fast to find sunlight that you can see it move in real time. Plants also have remarkable ways of finding food. (Don’t worry, most scientists agree that grass doesn’t feel pain.) In fact, much of the appealing scent of freshly cut grass is made up of those chemicals you’re literally smelling the grass’s defense system in action. When some plants are attacked by caterpillars or lawnmowers, for example, they release a suite of chemical compounds that can repel pests or even attract insect-killing wasps. “Plants are way more complicated than people give them credit for,” said Elizabeth Haswell, a professor and plant biologist at Washington University in St. They can’t run from predators or chase after prey, so they’ve evolved all kinds of clever tactics to survive. And that’s one reason some people perceive them as a bit dull, relative to other life on Earth.īut it’s actually the fact that plants are fixed that makes them so interesting. Plants are not animals they’re stuck in place. No matter the mechanism, this one woody vine - and its mimicry schtick - is pushing the boundary of what we know about plants. trifoliolata supports the idea that plants possess a form of vision and perhaps even a brain-like structure to process it. On one side are mainstream botanists, whose work is rooted in rigorous, repeatable studies, and on the other is a small group of researchers who believe plants share a number of attributes with animals, including humans. Searching for answers has intensified a fiery debate in the plant world. So how do they sense the shape of leaves around them and then copy it? The more exciting question, however, is how they do it. trifoliolata mimics less appetizing plants). Scientists have yet to figure out why, exactly, the vine mimics other plants, though it may give them some protection against herbivores like snails and beetles (assuming B. Image H shows what Boquila trifoliolata leaves look like when they’re not mimicking other plants. Yellow arrows point to leaves of Boquila trifoliolata that are mimicking other species in A-G. (Although there are few studies on this plant, scientists generally acknowledge that it can shape-shift.) Examples of Boquila trifoliolata mimicking the leaves of other plants. More incredible still is that two different parts of the same individual can mimic the leaves of two distinct plants, even if they look dramatically different, he says. trifoliolata, native to southern South America, can mimic the leaf shape, size, and even color of more than a dozen plants. Since then, Gianoli’s research has shown that B. “My mind was blown,” said Gianoli, a researcher at Chile’s Universidad de La Serena. trifoliolata: As the vine grows, it can mimic other nearby plants. What Gianoli discovered that day is a remarkable ability that is perhaps unique to B. Remarkably, roughly half of the other vines he encountered that afternoon had leaves that looked like other plants - not just other plants but the very plants growing next to them. trifoliolata plants, thinking this could be a fluke. He walked around the forest looking for other B. ![]() trifoliolata was trying to camouflage itself in the foliage. trifoliolata are stubby with three blunt lobes, but here, they looked just like those of the arrayán plant. As he traced it to the forest floor, he noticed this other plant was a species of vine called Boquila trifoliolata. Some of them were attached to a different and much thinner stem. That’s typical.īut when Gianoli took a closer look, he noticed something peculiar: Not all of those arrayán-shaped leaves came from the arrayán plant. Its leaves were small, lip-shaped, and apiculate - meaning they came to a point at the end. More than a decade ago, a plant ecologist named Ernesto Gianoli went for a walk in the woods, where he came across something that defies explanation.ĭuring his afternoon jaunt in the rainforest of southern Chile, he found a familiar shrub known as arrayán.
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