The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

by Zoë Schlanger

Henning returns to my first question, about where Nasa poissoniana’s memories could possibly be stored. That is, of course, still a mystery. But, Henning says, “maybe we are just not able to see these structures. Maybe they are so spread all over the body of the plant that there isn’t a single structure. Maybe that’s their trick. Maybe it’s the whole organism.” Memory, even in humans, is still mostly shrouded in mystery. Neurobiologists have found ways to “see” certain human memories on brain scans, as particular connections of neurons, but many more are yet invisible to science. And then there are the memories the human body keeps but which have nothing to do with neurons at all. Our immune cells remember pathogens, and draw on those memories to respond the next time they appear. Epigenetic memories in cells can be passed down through human generations; we now know that the toll of stress and trauma—as well as exposure to things like air pollution—travels down the bloodline to children and grandchildren, potentially impacting things like inflammation markers. The body, it has been said, keeps the score. But these aren’t the type of memories we include in the landscape of our consciousness. The memories our body keeps for us are only silent until they emerge as a change in our health. Then they become very tangible. But epigenetics itself is a field we are only beginning to peel back the curtain on.