Personality of plants

PLANT INTELLIGENCE
To a person on a country road, the wayside
trees and flowers are too often mere happenings
or creations. Their ways are so quiet and un-
demonstrative, that, if he has never been taught
differently, he rarely thinks of classifying them
as independent, free-acting beings. The fact
that they are anchored to the soil seems to remove
them from the realm of self-willed creation.
Yet why should it? Are fishes not doomed
to pass all their days in the chemical combina-
tion of hydrogen and oxygen we call water?
Does not the delicate Canary die if the air
surrounding it goes below a certain tempera-
ture?
The fact is that many plants exhibit all the
elemental qualities of human intelligence and
also have vague psychic expressions of their
own which we only understand in a very limited
way.
What causes the radicle or root of the smallest
sprouting seedling always to grow down
and the plumule or stem always to grow up?
It cannot be gravity because that great earth
pull would affect both parts equally. This same
radicle, when it has developed into a full-
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