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

by Zoë Schlanger

Everyone

in this situation comes within a hair of death to ultimately flourish. This is the push and pull of interdependence and competition.

Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice that is familiar to his soul,” he wrote; “Everything is interaction and reciprocal,” and therefore nature “gives the impression of the whole.”

Alezander Von Humboldt

Many plants are bisexual, with male and female genitalia occurring together on the same flower (in plant anatomy these are called, intriguingly, “perfect” flowers).

There is something decidedly queer in all of this—the orchids and aspens and strawberries and antplants and ginkgoes—a sense of sensual entanglement that disregards binaries, runs across the species boundary, and almost gleefully defies heteronormative modes of reproduction. This lens might also help us escape the idea that everything in nature is a battle, with a clear winner. Sometimes it may be an improvisation, or a collaboration, or something else entirely.

Scientists know a tremendous amount about plants. They also might not yet know what a plant is at all.