Can seeds think? 

Several years ago I hosted a propagation workshop and we explored the topic of growing plants from seed. I talked about seeds waiting for the right moment to germinate, knowing that winter had passed, measuring the temperature or daylength, and sensing when they were at the right depth to break out of their casings.

After the session a tiny, elderly woman with bright button eyes hovered by me as I was clearing up. She spoke in a clear, firm voice. ‘You do know that plants can’t think, don’t you? That they don’t actually have brains?’

I looked up, smiling. ‘Of course they don’t have brains. I was just using figures of speech to illustrate their responses to the world around them, that’s all.’

‘That’s fine then. It’s just that you used words like ‘knowing’ and ‘waiting’, which they don’t actually experience, of course. I am a scientist and I felt you may have misled some of the people here, who might have thought you were being literal.’

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