“In a 2022 paper, it was suggested that the plant has some sort of vision using ocelli. This hypothesis was presented on the basis of experiments in which the vine appeared to mimic plastic vines and artificial plants. However, the only control used was the lower leaves on the same plants, with an opaque shelf over them which could have influenced light exposure. The lack of control plants climbing anything apart from the same model of artificial host plant makes it plausible that the observed differences were due to age and light exposure.”
That seems like a simple hypothesis to test: just do the same setup with the shelves but without the plastic plant. Additional idea: also test with artificial leaves with the same form as a plain Boquila.
I have no ability to vet the paper for science I'm afraid, but on an intuitive level, and especially given all the different biological sensing and animal-cleverness results that have been reported in recent years, I would not be at all surprised if the 'vision' hypothesis holds in the end.
Cuttlefish (maybe even perhaps their skin independently of the brain?) can do this type of pattern-sensing and response, so why not plants?
To be able to do this kind of thing only requires slightly a bigger (and perhaps differently-shaped) buffer for information ultimately, right?
Plants, by not being in a hurry, can disperse their information processing machinery in a way that makes it both resistant to damage and, anatomically, indefinitely hard to identify.
They also can get by, for the same reason, with radically less of it, because the same machinery can worry at all stages of the problem, serially, one after another, not all at once as animals must.
Finally, because slow processing demands such a small fraction of their energy budget, they can afford to support a great deal more of it than animals can.
Plants can afford to be very, very intelligent. If we have not found examples of it, we might just not be looking correctly. What a plant could usefully do with intelligence might be decidedly non-obvious to such as ourselves, but it would be idiotic to conclude no such use is likely.
(Octopus, incidentally, are able to mimic colors their eyes are believed not equipped to perceive.)
Given that the fruit is actually enjoyed raw by native people there I'd guess that, yes, that's probably exactly it. Ideally, a plant adapted to having an edible fruit, can remain inconspicuous as much as possible to avoid it's leaves being munched on and then produce a bright red berry when it's ready to attract the attention of whoever they want to eat their fruit
I know this isn't what you're saying but "seeds are stored in the leaves" sounds like the botanist equivalent of "pee is stored in the balls" haha
But actually the hypotheses I've seen align more with the original poster's ideas. Plants don't want their leaves eaten. That's why they produce so many secondary chemicals to make leaves taste bitter or hard to digest. Most plants don't even want their fruit eaten actually. A plant has to spend a lot of "evolution points" (to borrow a phrase from TierZoo) to adapt to being able to survive the digestive process of whichever seed disperser it wants to attract.
There are a few other plants that do similar mimicry of specific plants, but what's remarkable about B. trifoliolata is that it mimics such a large variety of plant leaves. Even leaves of some plants not found in it's native habitat! Even more remarkable is the fact that it does not require physical contact with a plant to mimic the leaves! As far as we know, this is totally unique
I’ve been trying to find a place to buy this plant (Texas, USA) for 3 years. Every place online I have found is always out of stock. Right now is actually the season to plant it, so I’ve been looking for it again. Has anyone found a place to buy it that is not out of stock and ships to the US?
Given its native range,[0] I highly doubt you'd be able to recreate it's native environment very well. Year-round rain, very hummus-rich soil, yet up to 2 weeks of snow per year. It's also dioecious so you'll need both male and female flowers for it to reproduce. Not to mention that it's a parasitic plant and likely has very specific relationships with its most common hosts. Also many plants from areas like this have very specific mycorrhizal associations so on top of that you might also require the right soil ecosystem. It's quite likely that it relies on some specific fungal species that's endemic to that area too given the uniqueness of the environment
Are you experienced with growing plants this difficult? I'm big into plants and spend a lot of time reading about plants like these and it always saddens me to read about cool plants and then see that they're endangered because of wild harvesting to sell on the market. I always wonder who the hell is buying this. B. trifoliolata has not yet been evaluated for whether or not its endangered and it's unlikely it will any time soon since parasitic plants are notoriously hard to diagnose. Please don't go out searching for this unless you're absolutely sure you have the equipment and knowledge necessary to actually propagate this plant. A quick search on the Tropical Fruit Forum[1] shows that no one else has really had much success in cultivating this
When it comes to other animals, theres a lot of principled caution about attributing supposedly "human" concepts to apes or orca whales. When it comes to computers, we tend to be exceedingly cautious.
For some reason that principled caution goes out the window once we start talking about plants.
Here on HN I've seen folks equate photoreceptivity to consciousness, chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication", and indulge in open ended musing about the gaia hypothesis. Practically everything is game and there's no telling how seroius people are being or if they're just getting lost in their own metaphors.
The caution about attributing "human concepts" to other animals, like emotions, empathy, language and self-awareness, comes from the religious idea that humans are "above" all the other creatures. If God created humans as some special case, then it makes sense.
Not long ago, it was believed that animals (and human babies) couldn't feel pain. Nowadays it's a ridiculous notion, but it was born of the idea that a certain animal was "exceptional" among all those others and has all these special properties, granted by God, that no other animals possess. That's not a belief that should be the "scientific" default anymore.
Not at all. The caution about attributing human concepts to other animals is that they can have an arbitrarily different brain organization in such a way that stretches those notions beyond what we usually take them to mean. Does a tiger experience joy? If it does, what does joy feel like to a tiger? Is bird song language? What are they saying? That last question is obviously begging the question, are they saying anything? Is "saying" something that more than humans can do, or when we refer to the word "say" do we only apply it to humans expressing human concepts? We don't even know if the concepts we use to describe minds are even valid, or if they are just products of introspection. This, along with the fact that other abstract aspects of the human condition are also on shaky ground when you change the underlying substrate those aspects emerge from, means that it's not clear that animals have those same exact aspects in their species-specific condition, and if they do have some similar aspects, those aspects can be quite different than what we'd find in humans, with completely different sets of states. TL;DR We hardly know if you and I see the same red, let alone if a tiger and a human feel the same joy.
Depends on what you mean by language. If you mean "a structured system of communication", then it absolutely is. The only modern scientific rejection of birds songs as language is based around the definition of the word "language".
They're saying many different things such as "I'm ready to mate", "I'm hungry", "Stay away", "Come here", and "Predator nearby". Not only that, but birds are able to specify which kind of predator is nearby.
There's a resistance to these ideas that goes beyond objective science, and it's because we were previously basing our understandings on faulty assumptions. There's even a term for it, "human exceptionalism".
I think you're underestimating how much scientific weight the Gaia hypothesis actually has.[0] Despite its, admittedly unfortunate, name, it's main proponents include really influential figures in biology[1][2]
I don’t think that there is a contradiction since I would not expect the ones who are careful with these ideas on animals and the ones suggesting them for plants to be the same people.
Like anyone else, I am not in the position of being able safely generalize from what I've seen to what is believed by 50% + 1 of the community. I can just make inferences based on what I've experienced and what it shows about the ideas the community is comfortable entertaining.
But yes, I've seen people suggest that photo-receptivity amounts to consciousness, that amoeba can feel sensation, that the human genome is complex and can be reasonably assumed to host its own form of consciousness, and that chemical exchanges between plants amounts to full fledged communication, without any limiting qualifications.
>"chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication"" - without context it may have been a perfectly reasonable supposition.
Perhaps I can add your endorsement of this view to the list, and we can later see if your view is brushed off belonging to a small minority of nutters.
You make a claim that others are stupid, I can't dismiss it, nor can I accept it. As such I accept your evaluation as honest held, but I can't do anything with it like learn something useful from it.
As for "Perhaps I can add your endorsement of this view to the list..." please be careful. Communication requires an exchange of information. If the exchange is in the form of chemicals, that's fine as communication is happening via chemical exchange. But whether chemical exchange alone IS communication is a philosophical question[1]. All I'm saying is that you may be misrepresnting or misunderstanding other people's stated position. Again, without links to read I can't judge.
[1] I'd say yes it is but am open to being shown wrong. It probably depends on whether you believe conscious intent is required. I say no, others may say yes, it is needed.
“In a 2022 paper, it was suggested that the plant has some sort of vision using ocelli. This hypothesis was presented on the basis of experiments in which the vine appeared to mimic plastic vines and artificial plants. However, the only control used was the lower leaves on the same plants, with an opaque shelf over them which could have influenced light exposure. The lack of control plants climbing anything apart from the same model of artificial host plant makes it plausible that the observed differences were due to age and light exposure.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquila