Plants are more complicated than we think

I read an interesting article in Discover magazine.  We all know that plants can grow toward the sunlight, which doesn’t seem that surprising that the cells in the leaves can sense sunlight.  But they did a study where they trained plants to associate a fan with subsequent sunlight, and the plants grew toward the fan.  Just in case you’re thinking, “Yeah, well, maybe a breeze stimulates growth.” (which is what I was thinking), they trained a different set of plants to grow AWAY from the fan.  So plants can learn to use stimuli other than sunshine, to figure out where the sunshine is going to be in the future.  Wow!

Here’s the article.  http://discovermagazine.com/2017/may-2017/smarty-plants

HAPPY EARTH DAY!