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The Memories of Plants

atlasobscura.com

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Re: The Memories of Plants

#11

Post by X86BSD »

eponeponepon wrote: post #10

A little off-topic, but since Atlas Obscura crops up here fairly often, I'd just like to say that their book's a very pleasant thing to own, if you're into coffee-table books at all. I bought it on a whim after seeing an ad on the site, and I'm quite enjoying picking through it in fits and starts. Nothing in it that isn't on the site as far as I'm aware, but sometimes a laptop just doesn't cut the mustard for leisure…

Seconded, it really is a nice, as you said, coffee table book. It's just really nice to pick up and read briefly while waiting for the wife to get ready or when you have moments of brief leisure.

Re: The Memories of Plants

#12

Post by anfractuosity »

burnte wrote: post #9
anfractuosity wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, that's true. As far as I know though, you can't force the venus fly trap or mimosa to open it's leaves again via electricity. I think with the mimosa iirc, strong bright light can open it's leaves though.

Correct. Both of those actions occur due to the ion channels and gates resetting to their normal, pre-triggered state. In both of these plants their movements are triggered by ion potentials changing, like nerves in animals, opening channels to move water from one area to another, changing the shape of cells, bending cell walls due to water pressure, causing the movement. Then, slowly the water is moved back to its p…

Thanks for the description, that makes a lot of sense.

I'll have to read up what light is doing wrt the Mimosa, as to how it opens the leaves.

I bought one recently, as well as closing it's leaves when you touch them, it seems to 'go to sleep', when it gets darker.

Edit:

https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/Plants_Mimosas

Is cool, measuring the action potential.

Re: The Memories of Plants

#13

Post by gertef »

damnfine wrote: post #7
asciimo wrote: post #4

A surprisingly common argument against veganism is "but plants feel pain, too," based on interpretations of articles such as this one on Vice [ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a-botanis... ]. I suppose the argument is that, if there is any amount of cruelty in our consumption, then we may as well surrender to this fact and eat whatever we want. (Also, haha vegans are dumb.) I'm sure this study will…

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often. The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

How does harvesting animals cause less suffering, in the real world we live in? The usual answer is "well IF you are friends with your cow/chicken and give it lots of pasture and then you squeeze it for milk occasionally and one day quickly and painlessly end its life, then its humane" but then motte-and-bailey--style that gets used to excuse a diet full of factory-farmed meat and chicken trucks and forcibly-impregnating cows and then seizing and killing their newborns[1], which is the vast vast majority of meat consumption.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+trucks&source=lnms&t...

[2] https://www.ciwf.com/farm-animals/cows/dairy-cows/

Re: The Memories of Plants

#14

Post by EGreg »

damnfine wrote: post #7
asciimo wrote: post #4

A surprisingly common argument against veganism is "but plants feel pain, too," based on interpretations of articles such as this one on Vice [ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a-botanis... ]. I suppose the argument is that, if there is any amount of cruelty in our consumption, then we may as well surrender to this fact and eat whatever we want. (Also, haha vegans are dumb.) I'm sure this study will…

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often. The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

There are other factors too including carcinogens in meat

http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/it...

Re: The Memories of Plants

#15

Post by EGreg »

gertef wrote: post #13
damnfine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often. The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

How does harvesting animals cause less suffering, in the real world we live in? The usual answer is "well IF you are friends with your cow/chicken and give it lots of pasture and then you squeeze it for milk occasionally and one day quickly and painlessly end its life, then its humane" but then motte-and-bailey--style that gets used to excuse a diet full of factory-farmed meat and chicken trucks and forcibly-impregna…

Also Capitalism exacerbates this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Dairy_Checkoff

Re: The Memories of Plants

#16

Post by pkkim »

damnfine wrote: post #7
asciimo wrote: post #4

A surprisingly common argument against veganism is "but plants feel pain, too," based on interpretations of articles such as this one on Vice [ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a-botanis... ]. I suppose the argument is that, if there is any amount of cruelty in our consumption, then we may as well surrender to this fact and eat whatever we want. (Also, haha vegans are dumb.) I'm sure this study will…

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often. The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

Harvesting animals also requires harvesting plants, for animal feed. It takes a lot more plant matter to create 1000 Calories worth of beef than of any plant-based food, probably around ten times more based on the amount of food energy required / food energy provided of meat.

Re: The Memories of Plants

#17

Post by joshvm »

EGreg wrote: post #14
damnfine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often. The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

There are other factors too including carcinogens in meat http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/it...

It's incredibly difficult to measure what does and does not cause cancer. In reality it's an aggregate of your genetics and how you lived your life, plus a big helping of luck.

As with all "cancer-causing" substances it's worth being more clear. Firstly, the official advice is that processed meats (that involve curing, smoking, etc) and red meats (beef, lamb, goat and pork) increase your risk of cancer. It's not a blanket "meat contains carcinogens" as far as I can tell (chicken seems to be fine - no doubt the Daily Mail would say otherwise).

The actual risk in the study is a +18% chance of colon cancer, but the average risk is only 5%. If you ate 4 slices of bacon a day, your risk goes up to 6%. That may well be a statistically significant number, but as an individual +1% is well in the noise where other factors could dominate. There is an increased risk for other cancers, but I don't have the numbers and I guess they were lower.

Re: The Memories of Plants

#18

Post by seszett »

cwkoss wrote: post #5

I wonder to what extent cuttings are effected by these epigenetic memories? Ex. - Grow plant A. Expose it to stimuli to make it form a 'memory' - Take a cutting from plant A and root it, making plant B. - Test plant B for response to the stimulus. Does plant B have the memory? If so, how many cutting-generations does it take for the memory to decay?

There's probably no reason cuttings should be different than a whole plant as they don't have any fundamental difference. Unless the roots themselves have an importance in the process (since the cuttings will then grow new "inexperienced" roots) but I doubt it.

I'm more intrigued by what would happen with grafts.

Does rootstock transmit memories ("memories") to a scion, does a scion transmit memories to rootstock, does it work with interspecific grafts, does it work with intergeneric grafts? Do multiple scions transmit memories between each other?

Re: The Memories of Plants

#19

Post by toomanybeersies »

asciimo wrote: post #4

A surprisingly common argument against veganism is "but plants feel pain, too," based on interpretations of articles such as this one on Vice [ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd74nd/we-asked-a-botanis... ]. I suppose the argument is that, if there is any amount of cruelty in our consumption, then we may as well surrender to this fact and eat whatever we want. (Also, haha vegans are dumb.) I'm sure this study will…

Well you could become a fungitarian I guess? You'd really struggle to get enough calories purely from fungus though, I guess you could get a decent amount from algae if you build some nice large algae reactors to feed you.

Re: The Memories of Plants

#20

Post by damnfine »

gertef wrote: post #13
damnfine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Vegan shows up! I kid, but the stereotype really holds true all too often. The unsaid assumption in your comment, that I disagree with, is that harvesting animals causes anymore suffering than caring for and harvesting plants (in a humane manner, which admittedly, many facotry farms fail at on either side.)

How does harvesting animals cause less suffering, in the real world we live in? The usual answer is "well IF you are friends with your cow/chicken and give it lots of pasture and then you squeeze it for milk occasionally and one day quickly and painlessly end its life, then its humane" but then motte-and-bailey--style that gets used to excuse a diet full of factory-farmed meat and chicken trucks and forcibly-impregna…

All my meat is raised on open pasture locally, fed only on wild grasses. I specifically said factory farms are a clear problem. Thanks for talking past me and ignoring my point. This is what makes conversing wih you people get on my nerves. Show some intellectual respect and get some in retuen.
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