Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

by Annaka Harris

In an interview with Scientific American, Chamovitz describes how different types of memory play a role in plant behavior: If memory entails forming the memory (encoding information), retaining the memory (storing information), and recalling the memory (retrieving information), then plants definitely remember. For example a Venus Fly Trap needs to have two of the hairs on its leaves touched by a bug in order to shut, so it remembers that the first one has been touched. . . . Wheat seedlings remember that they’ve gone through winter before they start to flower and make seeds. And some stressed plants give rise to progeny that are more resistant to the same stress, a type of transgenerational memory that’s also been recently shown also in animals.