Plants may be able to recognise themselves.

Experiments show that a sagebrush plant can recognise a genetically identical cutting growing nearby.

What's more, the two clones communicate and cooperate with one another, to avoid being eaten by herbivores.

The findings, published in Ecology Letters, raise the tantalising possibility that plants, just like animals, often prefer to help their relatives over unrelated individuals.

The ability to distinguish self from non-self is a vital one in nature.

It allows many animals to act preferentially towards others that are genetically related to themselves; for example, a female lion raising her young, or protecting other more distantly related cubs in her pride.

But the evidence that plants can do the same is limited and controversial.
It implies that plants are capable of more sophisticated behaviour than we imagined.

"It implies that plants are capable of more sophisticated behaviour than we imagined."
Biologist Richard Karban

Biologist Richard Karban:
Some experiments have shown that if a plant's roots grow near to those of another unrelated plant, the two will try to compete for nutrients and water. But if a root grows close to another from the same parent plant, the two do not try to compete with one another.

However, in these experiments, when two cuttings of the same plant are then grown alongside each other, their roots still compete for resources. That infers that two separate plants cannot recognise that they are genetic kin.

Now research by Richard Karban of the University of California, in Davis, US and Kaori Shiojiri of Kyoto University in Otsu, Japan has revealed that some plants are capable of doing just that.

Originally posted by breakingdradles
What's next, are we going to find that they have mating rituals too? lol

The carnivorous plant (nepenthes attenboroughii) was found by researchers atop Mt. Victoria, a remote mountain in Palawan, Philippines. The research team, led by Stewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Productions, had learned of the plant in 2000 after a group of Christian missionaries stumbled upon it while trekking up a remote mountain and reported it to a local newspaper.
The discovery, announced last week, was detailed in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.

The pitcher plant is the world's second largest and can grow to more than 4 feet tall, with a pitcher-shaped structure filled with liquid. The plant secretes nectar around its mouth to lure rats, insects and other prey into its trap. Once an animal has fallen in, enzymes and acids in the fluid break down the carcass of the drowned victim

Published in 1973, The Secret Life of Plants was written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It is described as “A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man.” Essentially, the subject of the book is the idea that plants may be sentient, despite their lack of a nervous system and a brain.