Can Plants Taste?

Professor Jack C Schultz of the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia describe plants as slow animals. Humans have an intertwined sense of smell and taste. It is similar to plants too.   

He says that plants, like animals, fight for their space, look for food, set up traps for prey, and evade predators. Unlike human beings who have five senses to accompany them, plants use sensory organs to understand their surroundings.

They can sense sunlight, with many of them opening their pores during the day to absorb maximum sunlight. They can also use it to communicate with their surroundings, with around 90 percent of plants being mutually beneficial with a fungus. These allow them access to nutrients essential to their growth.

Also, they can taste the ground below them. Plants secrete substances allowing them to imbibe the necessary elements and providing others some vital nutrients too. Some of them also do it to understand their proximity to other plants and their strength.

They use all of it to decide whether it is essential to contest for its share of food and water. Additionally, they can also sense the elements above the ground parts and determine if those can be of any help.

There is a thin line between animal and plant behavior even though they seem entirely different. Take a look at Venus flytraps. These plants have clamps that behave similarly to a human mouth. It lures its prey by emitting a sweet-smelling substance, and when they are in range, they close their “mouth” slowly, not to deter it away.

Plants are similar to human beings, and they have senses. They don’t behave in the same manner visibly, but the underlying tactics are identical.

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