Planting a seed of panic

We don’t wish to worry anyone, especially in these uncertain times, but an army is amassing – one with staggering hidden abilities.

And the real kicker is this; they have been slowly gathering forces right under our noses…and, worse, our lawn mowers. It’s not animal in nature, or geological or indeed mineral, but rather stems from the vegetable kingdom. Plants, it turns out, are poised to assert their dominance over us pathetic meat bags.

Why? Well firstly it seems that we are not the only ones to have developed an internet. A few years ago researchers from the University of Aberdeen, the James Hutton Institute and Rothamsted Research found evidence that, amazingly, plants seem to have evolved the ability to communicate via an underground network. Not of telephone wires or optic broadband fibres, but by an extensive network of fungi called mycorrhizae.

By some clever use of broad bean plants and grow bags, the team found that plants can use mycorrhizal networks to warn each other if they are under attack from aphids, such that those plugged in to the network can mount an early defence. The relationship has always been thought of as symbiotic – the fungi get food from the plant – but what the plant got from the fungi has never been as clear. But it seems as though their evolutionary role is, incredibly, as a kind of biological internet service provider.

Now, new work by Canadian ecologist Professor Suzanne Simard, suggested that – quite preposterously – trees can actually recognise offspring using this underground communication network. Speaking about her work, published in Annals of Botany Plants, she said: “Mother trees colonise their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. So we’ve used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighbouring seedlings, not only carbon but also defence signals. So trees talk.”

Ok…so plants can communicate with each other – but it’s not like they can do, say, mathematics or anything…right? Err, we’ll just leave this here…

Scientists from the John Innes Centre say they are ‘amazed’ to find that plants seem to have an inbuilt capacity to perform arithmetic calculation. Unbelievable as it may seem, their research suggests that in order to consume just the right amount of stored energy overnight (in the form of starch) plants actually calculate – CALCULATE! – using division – DIVISION! Study leader Professor Alison Smith sums it up: “They’re actually doing maths in a simple, chemical way – that’s amazing, it astonished us as scientists to see that.

“This is pre-GCSE maths they’re doing, but they’re doing maths.” Right, of course – pre-GCSE maths…well that’s ok then. The team think that mechanisms in the leaves measure the amount of starch and combine this with time data from the internal clock of the plant to work out the rate of starch consumption that is appropriate. Basically the plant divides the amount of starch by the time left before the sun rises and it can start photosynthesising once again.

So then – Plants can do maths, communicate via an underground symbiotic internet and support their kin…we just don’t think it is possible to be overly dramatic about this. So, what now? Trade sanctions? UN resolutions? Unilateral military action? At the very least can someone PLEASE shout the phrase “Red alert…Go To Red Alert!”

It’s a battle field out there – just remember that the next time you slip out for a spot of gardening…