The First Day of a Plant-Based Christmas!

On the First Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, an excerpt from his excuse for an Introduction:

BETTER READ THIS FIRST

…this book is not your garden-variety garden book. You will find no lists of recommended or favorite plants, and scarce tips for growing, propagating, or pruning plants in this book. Although Be Happy Forever? Make a Garden! is a good reference book, albeit a quirky, yea, even a kinky one, it ventures far beyond simply providing answers.

Accordingly, this is the perfect time to ask a fundamental question: what are plants?

You botanists put your hands down. What are they really? There is much to add to the discussion of the nature of vegetation, even though people have pondered plants for millennia. Aristotle believed that plants have souls but lack sensation. It is anybody’s guess what a soul is, and those who think that they know what a soul is may not believe that plants could have souls, that plants may have that same animating force, purposeful life, and entwinement with the Great Spirit that many humans are fond of believing we monopolize.

We don’t want to wade into those weeds right now, so consider just the second part of Aristotle’s belief: that plants lack sensation. Do you think that Aristotle meant sensation as sense perception, which, by extension, involves response to stimuli?…

But think—did Aristotle mean sensation as in feelings? It’s all Greek to everyone; maybe translators got it a little wrinkled. Was he saying that plants don’t have feelings? Did he mean that you can’t embarrass, delight, inspire, sadden, or piss them off? Perhaps. But go back to consider Aristotle’s entire premise. Ask yourself, could a plant, or any living being for that matter, have a soul but lack feelings? And by feelings, are we talking about emotions, or about instincts or intuition?

It has been said that the difference between people and animals is that animals have instincts, whereas humans have intuition. I didn’t say it and don’t believe it; I’m just reporting here. But are intuition and instincts different things? Are we not animals? Could plants have instincts?

We humans have in common with every plant a large part of our genetic blueprint, our DNA. Gene sequencing has demonstrated that we share more than 60 percent of our DNA with a banana plant. Are you glad to see me or is that a double helix in your pocket?

All kidding aside, is it possible that we share other traits as well that we generally believe are restricted to the Animal Kingdom? Do you have enough in common with plants to be able to understand them, to perceive their state, their motives, or even to communicate with them? If you speak English loudly and slowly to them, will they know what you are saying? Can plants read your mind, sense your presence, your mood, or remember you?

If you are not willing to ask questions such as these, then put this book down and go watch TV. If you can’t imagine that you are somehow similar to plants, go be a couch potato, even if you are a health nut. Be my guest and “veg out” in the parlance of the day, no similarity to plant life there.

But if you think you have an answer to any of these questions, then by all means ask yourself, how do you know? Do you know by reason and empirical evidence, or by faith, teachings, or superstition? Do you have a hunch, a feeling, an intuition? Do plants have feelings? Do they have souls? Was Aristotle right?