The Memory Plant

Can you remember where you put your car keys?  Recent work in the new system of study of plant signaling and memory shows that plants may have better memories than we do!

There are fascinating plants high in the Peruvian Andes that have this amazing skill set of “memory”.  The Nasa poissoniana, is a vivid star-shaped flowering plant.  Besides the beautiful blooms with their talented stamens, they are also known for the stinging hairs on each stem.  Touching the stems is “really painful.”

One of their greatest talents of the Nasa poissoniana is that they can gymnastically wave around their stamens—organs used for fertilization—to maximize pollen distribution.  Other plants curl their leaves or catapult their seeds—but this amazing plant just “does the twist” for maximum pollination!

Even more surprising, in a recent study in “Plant Signaling and Behavior”, it is suggested that individual plants can adjust the timing of these movements based on their previous experiences with insect pollinators.  In other words—they learn from the past.

Over the course of a flower's life, individual stamens swing one by one into the flower's center.  When a bee comes calling for nectar, it triggers the next stamen to come sweeping in, ready for a new bee—or maybe the same bee's return.  In this way, the flowers maximize their chances of transferring pollen to many different flowers.

Perhaps the most important part of this observation and discovery is that it helps create a broader picture of what plants can sense and learn and do.  Now, if we can only remember where we put those keys!

images andes Peru 2

Nasa Poissoniana

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