Personality of plants

PERSONALITY OF PLANTS
sions, tone of voice and bodily posture, so we
can guess at plant emotion by external manifestations.
When a flower greets the morning
sun with expanded petals, uplifted head and a
generally bright appearance, why should we not
say it is happy and contented? When an ap-
proaching storm causes a plant to droop its
body and contract its petals and leaves into the
smallest compass possible, why is not fear, apprehension
and melancholy indicated? When
the jaws of the Venus Fly-Trap close on its hap-
less victim, they must do so with a savage joy
akin to that of a Tiger springing on its prey.
There are those who relegate a certain
^amount of intelligence to plants but deny
them consciousness. They are unwilling to ad-
mit that plants are aware of their own physical
and mental processes. This would seem to be
the merest quibbling over terms and an entrance
into that metaphysics which does away with all
consciousness.
If plants were not conscious, at least under
stimulation, they would have long since per-
ished from the earth through inability to react
to new conditions. Francis Darwin says: "We
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