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

by Zoë Schlanger

On top of this, some evidence is trickling in that the way we grow food appears to be getting in the way of plant communication, though this is far from a generalizable situation. Some domesticated plants actually produce more volatiles than their wild varieties. But research has found that commercial varieties of corn are much less able to produce volatile signals than local cultivars when they notice herbivores laying their eggs on them. They are entirely unable to summon beneficial predators. There are, it seems, silent fields of corn, mute in their moment of danger. This raises questions about whether fields planted with highly engineered plants grown in vast identical plots for food, like the corn, have had communication unknowingly bred out of them. Or perhaps it has been rendered unnecessary by the hand of selection for a plant that is given everything it needs to survive without endlessly defending itself. This is, in part, why so many pesticides are necessary in modern industrial-scale farming: some plants seem no longer so able to do things like warn each other of invading pests, or summon beneficial predators at will.