Plants Can 'Talk': Gregarious Seeds Grow Better Among Neighbors

Forget about social butterflies; it's plants that are the gregarious ones. Scientists have discovered that plants may "talk" to one another via nanomechanical vibrations. This, in turn, causes them to grow better than they would otherwise.

In order to examine what factors causes plants to grow well or poorly, the researchers examined the chilli plant (Capsicum annum). More specifically, they grew these plants from seeds in the presence or absence of other chilli plants. In addition, they grew some of these plants in the presence of basil (Ocimum basilcum).

So what did the researchers find? In the absence of a neighboring plant, the germination rates were low. That is, the seeds didn't sprout. Yet when these seeds were placed next to a neighboring plant, there were far higher rates of germination.

In order to see if this was merely a fluke, the scientists then separated the seeds from the basil plants with black plastic. This kept the seeds from being influenced by either light or chemical signals. It turned out that, despite the barrier of separation, the seeds still had a higher rate of germination than the ones that were completely isolated. This suggested that there was some kind of communication going on between the plants which encouraged the seeds to germinate.

"Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seeds by some as yet unknown mechanism," said Monica Galiano of the University of Western Australia in a news release. "Bad neighbors, such as fennel, prevent chilli seed germination in the same way. We believe the answer may involve acoustic signals generated using nanomechanical oscillations from inside the cell which allow rapid communication between nearby plants."

This idea may seem a bit farfetched. After all, talking plants seem more like the idea of science fiction than fact. With that said, though, the scientists did show that some other factor is influencing the plants' growth aside from chemicals, contact or light. Because of this, it's very possible that there are some ways that plants can respond to one another across space; what that method is, though, remains to be seen.

The findings were published in the journal BMC Ecology.