A Reaquaintance with an Old Friend

I happened to enter the house of my neighbor the other day and, after . . . 12 years? . . . noticed a familiar creature in the corner . . . my old dieffenbachia! In an earlier post, I had either misidentified or misremembered the plant as a ficus, but a dieffenbachia it is, probably dieffenbachia picta, but I am not sure of the cultivar. Apparently there are many that are available but picta is among the more common.

I remember it as being quite different when I had it, with fewer and larger leaves, and probably smaller overall. Maybe the perceived difference is due to the relative scale of plant to leaf because without a doubt it is a much bigger plant now.

What I remember as a mere spindly shadow of itself a few months after I gave it to my neighbor as I left my house, is now a much grander specimen. My neighbor, whose identity I shall keep confidential, really has a green thumb. He told me that he has been taking good care of it, but that it was really not that demanding at all. It is in the same relative position in his house as it was in mine: in a corner with filtered light. He said he waters it regularly and fertilizes it once a year, and that he had planted some cuttings in the same pot to balance it out, which accounts for its more symmetrical appearance. It always wanted to lean towards the light when I had it.

What is interesting is that when I gave it to my neighbor, he was having some personal difficulties and was himself in bad shape. He is in his eighties now, and even with the advancing years, he is in much better shape and the fact that the plant is also seems to me to be more than a coincidence. It is no exaggeration in my mind to speak in terms of family and social dynamics even when speaking of plants, for they are a part of our collective networks as well as the humans and other animals of our lives are.

As I left, I told my friend how happy I was to see the plant doing so well. He asked if I wanted it back. I immediately said: "By no means, he's yours now and has been for the past ten years!" I hope the plant feels similarly. He certainly seems to.

The Time Cycles of Plants

How strange it is, at least from a human perspective, that a single plant can evince such radically disparate time parameters, from the generally slow growth of its roots, trunk, branches and stems to the rapid cycling of an individual blossom. I am trying to think of an analogous dynamic in human beings or other animals, but I cannot think of anything that comes close, except perhaps for the growth of hair and nails, at least as it exists externally.

The combination of duration and ephemerality in plants is no doubt an adaptive feature that is strongly related to their sessile ontology. If a being cannot fight or flee, being able to establish oneself in a strong and durable way, such as by growing a thick trunk covered with tough bark, and by being able to quickly reproduce when conditions are optimal, such as by producing a blossom, seem to be ideal strategies for survival.

It is this this quality of plants, rooted most fundamentally in their radical exteriority, that is, in their thorough and intimate immersion in what we call the 'environment', a point made nicely by Michael Marder, that makes them so different from us. Given their immense power as mediators between the largest forces of the universe and the most fleeting of material forms, most notably as synthesizers of light, it is difficult to conceive of plants, the most abundant form of life on the planet, using the same paradigm of individual and environment that one uses to consider the ontology of human beings and other animals. Plants are their environment and their environment is the plants themselves, not entirely or in an absolute sense, a rock is still a rock and a plant a plant, but much more so than is the case for animals.

Of course, the convention of thinking of animals as being separate from their environment is under constant revision, as scientists discover more and more how what were once thought to be individual organisms are actually much more accurately described as ecologies, individual bodies included. Where would an individual person be, for example, without the legions of bacteria that make functional his or her digestive system? This notion becomes even more complex the more scientists discover and the more philosophers consider it. It will surely be the topic of future posts.

REVIEW: The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World, by Peter Wohlleben, Foreword by Tim Flannery, Vancouver: Greystone Books

I just finished reading Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees and found it refreshingly straightforward. The book is, plainly, about trees, full stop. I say refreshingly because many of the books I have read in this theme, and many of the thoughts I post based on my own observations and meditations, exist in that fraught zone between plant and human. I will be the first to admit that without rigorous research and deep contemplation, my posts can veer toward the banal, although I believe that this simplicity does serve the purpose of normalizing the idea of plants as intelligent beings, especially for an readership whom I suspect does not read widely and deeply in the topic, which is an important aim of this blog. I therefore trot in that thin band of discourse between the sophisticated and the naive.

Wohlleben by no means ignores the human relations with plants, but his main focus is on forests and the plant to plant and plant to animal relations that make them. This does not prevent him from using human metaphors for trees, most insightfully perhaps when he likens commercially produced trees to 'streetkids' who, having had their roots trimmed of their most intelligent parts, and having grown up in the vegetal version of foster homes, have sadly had their individual and collective capacities curtailed such that they live now and will forever live in a diminished state, in terms of both the quality and quantity of their existence.

Wohlleben's book adds a great deal to the discussion by treating plants on their own terms. As a forester, he seems to be especially comfortable in his relationship to trees, plants and other denizens of the forest, so that he sets a model for ideal relations between humans and their environment.

Still, there are moments, especially in his final chapter, where he lets his imagination run a bit and hopes for a time when science will allow us to actually know what plants are saying, to each other as well as to us. I suspect, however, that like the denizens of forests everywhere, Wohlleben already knows what the trees under his care are saying to him, having lived among them for decades.

There is great deal to contemplate in this slender volume, and it will take some time for me to synthesize some or all of it into the running discourse, a process that will undoubtedly produce fruit for future posts. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you slot The Hidden Life of Trees into your reading list.

The Ephemeral Nature of Flowers II

One interesting entry into the topic of the ephemeral nature of flowers is to consider an analogous condition in human beings. What might that be? People can be expressive by making changes to their hair, clothing and jewelry in a way that I think is very similar to a plant producing a blossom. Being a male in the industrialized modern world, and therefore not being enrolled in a regimen of making conspicuous alterations to my appearance, I stood largely on the outside of this aspect of human behavior until one day when I did something that changed all that. I happened to acquire a pen drive that had attached to it a lanyard that was long enough to allow me to hang the device around my neck. It was not more than a few centimeters long, slender and light weight, so I hardly knew it was there. It was also, however, coated in a shiny material, something like plastic chrome, so that when I walked down the street, I often got several glances from people walking in the opposite direction to me.

This was in Pisa, Italy, where foot traffic was heavy. Suddenly, I understood why young women wore showy clothing and especially why on some occasions they teased their hair out to be big and eye-catching. Adorning yourself in this way causes others to take notice. It enkindles respect, in the sense of re (as in 'back at you') spect (to see), which put together render the meaning of having someone acknowledge you by demonstrating their gaze, by making it plain that they see you. In other words, to be looked at in that way reaffirms your self, underscoring the notion that you actually exist. I believe there is actually a male human version of this called 'peacocking', which is either identical or very similar to the female version and it is not surprising that the practice of adorning yourself in a way that makes you highly visible is a key strategy to attracting a sexual partner.

This is precisely the reason for the flower, of course, as it attracts birds, bees and other creatures to it so that they eventually become coated in and then distribute the pollen from flower to flower which is essential to a plant's sexual reproduction. As Michel Serres has noted, ugliness and infertility often go hand-in-hand in nature, which explains why creatures of all kinds become less sexually attractive the older they get, losing their looks as they also lose their ability to produce plentiful and healthy offspring. The lovely scent of the flower undoubtedly plays a part in this process also.

Now, I had slung that pen drive around my neck without any intention of drawing attention to myself, for any aim or motive, but I must say that having many people glance your way, for whatever reason (and let this be a warning to both the glancer and the glancee), does stimulate one's sense of self and therefore the level of respect that one feels, at least respect as I construe it in that basic sense. I am not sure to what extent these psychological aspects are present in flowers, analogically or otherwise, but the instrumentality of showy beauty is clearly evident in beings running across the ontological spectrum.

The Ephemeral Nature of Flowers I

As mentioned previously, plants move extremely slowly, and this characteristic of theirs causes certain problems when it comes to the ability for humans to relate to them. There is also a highly ephemeral aspect of plants, which is perhaps most visible in their flowering. I saw this rose several days ago, noticing it for the first time in full flower even though I pass this particular rose bush several times a day. By the next day it was visibly less pristine and vigorous, and now it is a mere collection of wilted petals hanging from a desiccated bud. I have to meditate on this for a few days more, so I will end for now, and will say more about this quality of plants in my next post.