High School Writing Contest “Plants Have the Power to Speak a Great Language”
1st Place in the Pakistani High School Writing Contest “Plants Have the Power to Speak a Great Language”
Plants have a power to speak a great language
Biologists, ecologists, foresters and naturalist increasingly argue that plants speak and the human can learn to hear this language.
Number of peoples struggle with this concept because they cannot perceive that plants are connected to each other, argue biologist George David Haskell in his 2017 book named the song of trees. Connection is the network, Haskell says, necessitate communication and breeds language; understanding that nature is network; is the first step to hearing plants talk. Suzanne Simard is an ecologist, she spend 30 years studying forests. According to her opinion plants languages is a totally obvious concept to ecologist.
Plants exchange chemicals with fungus and send seeds essentially information packets with wind, birds, bat and other visitors for delivery around the world. Simard specializes in the underground relationship of plants. Her research shows that below the earth are vast networks of roots working with fungi to move water, carbon and nutrients among trees of all species. These complex, symbiotic networks mimic human neural and social networks. The even have mother plants at various centers, managing information flow, and the interconnectedness helps a slew of living things fight disease and survive together. Humans can be wiser about maintaining mother plants who passes on wisdom from one plants generation to the next. She believes it could lead a more sustainable commercial; wood industry; in a forest, a mother plant is connected to hundreds of other plants, sending excess carbon through delicate network to seeds below ground, is ensuring much greater seedling survival rates.
Forests are key to combating rural poverty, ensuring food security, providing livelihoods, supplying clean air and water, maintaining biodiversity, and mitigating climate change.
Plants are “biology’s philosophers”, dialoging over the ages, and offering a quite wisdom. We should listen, the biologist says, because they know that they are talking about. Haskell writes, Because they are not mobile, to thrive they must know there particular locus on the earth far better then any wandering animals.
The evidence for plant communication is only a few decades old, but in that short time it has leap frogged from electrifying discovered to decisive debunking sugar maples can warn each other about insects attacks :Infact,undamaged plants near that are once infested with hungry bugs began pumping out bug-repelling chemicals to ward of attack. They some how know what there neighbors are experiencing, and react to it. The mind –banding implication was that brain less plants could send , receive and interpret messages.
The first few talking plant papers quickly were shot down as statistically flawed or too artificial, irrelevant to the real-world war between plants and bugs chew leaves, plants respond by releasing volatile organic compounds into the air.
Plant communication may still be a tiny field, but the people who study it are no longer seen as a lunatic fringe. ‘ it used to be that people would not even talk to you: scientists are also exploring how the messages from these signals might spread. Farmers study doesn’t mean that plants have neurons, or brains, or anything like the systems that animals use to communicate. We don’t do justice to them when we try to put their fascinating, alien biology into human terms, he said. But we may have dramatically underestimated their capabilities.
2nd Place in the Pakistani High School Writing Contest “Plants Have the Power to Speak a Great Language”
PLANTS HAVE THE POWER TO SPEAK A GREAT LANGUAGE
Plants are tremendously important creation of the nature for maintaining environmental balance, source of food, herbal medicines, wood, material etc. Many of us presume that they are silent workers on Earth lacking the ability to communicate. Verily point to ponder is that if humans use floriography as a mean of emotional communication in their community then it would be skeptic to think that plants are speechless. Although knowledge of plant’s talking is quite new (couple of decades ago) and plant scientists and ecologists are trying their best to unveil their alien language [1].
Plants manage their conversation by releasing chemical compounds to react against any stimulus in extremely wise manner (Fig.1). The research on gene regulatory networks of plants can help scientists to better understand the responses of plants to environmental changes [2] hence it can enable us to uncover communication skills of flora. The purposeful talking helps them in following ways:
1. Growth and development: The growth and development of plants is a complex phenomenon that entails hormonal regulation and feedback machinery. Meristematic cells of plants divide and differentiate into variety of cells by secret chemical talk going on within plant body. In addition to this regeneration and totipotency also require set of hormones which enables plants to survive on the planet. Auxins [3], gibberellins [4], cytokinins, abscisic acid, and ethylene [5] are some famous regulators of growth of different parts of plant.
2. Symbiotic association: Strigolactones are considered to be amiable signals to talk with soil microbes [6].
3. Germination of seeds: Another challenge for plants is to ensure their survival in wildfire and they are armed with kerrikins to germinate their seeds after being burnt [7].
4. UV protection: Unlike humans plants are devoid of avoiding UV radiations by applying sunscreen or moving to shady place. The only way out for them is to withstand the situation and they perfectly handle it by accumulating DNA repair machinery and sunscreen metabolites (that protect the underlying tissues) [8].
5. Immunity: Like members of animal kingdom, plants also have innate immunity in the form of cytosol receptor proteins detecting pathogens and resultantly regulating body defense against foreign invaders e.g. salicylic acid [8].
Conclusion
So it won’t be wrong to say that plants; can talk but we can’t hear, have sight and vision beyond our imagination, remarkably smart attacks on competitors that can’t be captured by manmade radars, have highly controlled growth and development comparable to complex humans, fight for their existence like warrior, send ultimatums to local inhabitants as a guard, and the last but not the least….combat diseases by sophisticated immune responses. I will conclude as “there is much more than meets a human eye in the world of plants” and it is quite challenging for ecologists and botanists to translate the secret codes of alien language spoken by plant diversity.
References
1. https://www.quantamagazine.org… December 16, 2013.
2. Sun and Dinneny, BMC Biology (2018). 16:38 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-018-0506-7.
3. Grones P, Friml J. Auxin transporters and binding proteins at a glance. J Cell Sci. 2015; 128:1–7.
4. Yamaguchi S. Gibberellin metabolism and its regulation. Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2008; 59:225–51.
5. Park et al. BMC Biology (2017) 15:93 DOI 10.1186/s12915-017-0443-x.
6. Smith BMC Biology 2014, 12:19 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/12/19.
7. Nelson DC, Flematti GR, Ghisalberti EL, Dixon KW, Smith SM. Regulation of seed germination and seedling growth by chemical signals from burning vegetation. Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2012;63:107–30
8. Ulm and Jenkins BMC Biology (2015) 13:45 DOI 10.1186/s12915-015-0156-y.
9. Cesari S, Bernoux M, Moncuquet P, Kroj T, Dodds PN. A novel conserved mechanism for plant NLR protein pairs: the “integrated decoy” hypothesis. Front Plant Sci. 2014; 5:606.
Submitted by: Muhammad Saif-ur-Rehman
Class: 10
Army Public College, Westridge Ⅲ, Rawalpindi.
3rd Place in Pakistani High School Writing Contest “Plants Have the Power to Speak a Great Language”
Plants have the power to speak great language
Some say that only human beings are bestowed with the power to speak great language, but plants also can speak the language of their own. Plants got a lot to say if we take the time to listen.
“If you can’t hear the plants, you can’t feel the Nature”
As a science student we all must endure that plants have the language of their own. We can see or feel their language through different aspects, i.e.
- Biologically:
In biological sense, plants are the major source of life on earth. Plants are herbivores and are obligatory for all living organisms. With sun plants speak with the process known as photosynthesis, i.e. the process by which the plants use the energy from sunlight to produce glucose from carbon-dioxide and water. Plants contact with soil through roots and take useful minerals and water for reproduction and growth. Inside a tree there is a whole world and thousands of languages are spoken inside it, e.g. transpiration, diffusion, respiration, photosynthesis, plants physiology and pollination etc. At cell level there are different languages (processes) being spoken. Chloroplasts, Vacuoles, Nucleus and other cell organelles speak the languages of their own.
These languages can only be understand by the science students. Simple computer students or art students or other students can’t understand these languages (terms). Plants also have a different kind of language in literature(this shows that nature gives us twist at every turn).
- Literally:
In literature plant have their own aspect and a whole different language. The leafs of trees shows a big family. It tells us that we all should live together but instead we humans abandon our dear-ones in search of food and livelihood. In different changing weathers such as in rain or wind storm the trees stay still and tells us that life is very difficult it gives us many ups and downs but we should not get depressed by them but should stay still. i.e.be emotionally hard in difficult times. As we all know plants have different verities. Some pants have defense system, some have attacking system, some are beautiful, some are noble, some are dirty, some are worth life saving and some are life taking deadly plants. All these different verities of plant show different faces of humans and other living creatures.
A man one’s said: “Life should be like a cactus”
i.e. we should compromise in our life. In great heat plants give us a cool shadow and in great cold plants give us a hot quilt of their leafs. The waving and glooming of flowers and plants shows us that there is peace and happiness in life beside all difficult moments. Plants do mutual work and reproduce mutually, by doing this they want to tell us that by mutual working we can achieve everything.
By discussing so much about plants I think that plants are the most dominant organisms in the world. This much inspiration and talk about plants made me plant a tree or more in my backyard. I will also provoke other people for plantation and also I want you all to do the same. In the end I would say that “Life on the earth starts from the plants and ends at the Plants”
In the end I would convey the message that everyone should celebrate the world plant day on 21 March and should plant a tree of their name.
Name: M.Uzair AGE:17 years
Class: 11 (Pre.Med)
College: Karlot residential college, Islamabad
4th Place in the Pakistani High School Writing Contest “Plants Have the Power to Speak a Great Language”
Abstract:
“Nature is the art of God”, well said by Dante Alighieri.
Plants are important segment of nature. They give beauty and colours to environment and make our surrounding pleasant. Plants have consciousness andlike humans they possess feelings. As they lack the brain and nervous system, so they respond to changes in terms of stimuli. For example a plant can respond by turning towards the light or closing over a fly. Even scientists believe that plants talk to each other; but their echos cannot be detected by our ears as they communicate ultrasonically. They communicate by their own ways by producing secondary metabolites and chemicals.
Plants can also connect through ones feelings easily. So you can be friends of plants. Your feelings induce an impact on the nearby plants. Anyone who approaches them with the feelings of awe and wonder or love and gratitude, they will respond. Such feelings open your heart in making connection with plants. One can easily make strong relation with plants by going close to them and studying the colors, shape, number of petals, and the pattern of leaves formation.
Similarly early in the morning plants do respond to cool breeze and give great sense of smile. However, in autumn season they show their sadness and turn their leaves yellow and shed them. They become happy at spring season and show their beautiful colors. They are best companion; they stay close together in a cuddle form and never leave alone each other.
So, develop a strong relation with your surrounding plants. They will keep you happy and produce oxygen for you to respire; moreover clean up the whole environment. In the end, respect them, get relax and enjoy among the beauty of plants around you.
Name: Rabia Afaq
Class: 1st year
D.P.S College, Okara,Pakistan
Honorable Mention in the Pakistani High School Writing Contest “Plants Have the Power to Speak a Great Language”
However, this isn’t everything plants are much more beyond than our thoughts. The greatest affair is that animals can’t live without plants even they are humans, they are birds, they are aquatic animals or other animals on land, they all need oxygen which came from plants. Not only this, we also need food for our survival and the source is again plants. Plants gave our environment a charming look, some are used in healing purposes, some are used as medicines and others are in making of different daily life materials. Plants do all these for us so it does not make sense for considering them as non-living organisms or speechless.
Now the turning point is that how a plant say something. There are number of ways through which plants speak. Previous month me and my father purchased few plants from the nursery for planting them in our garden at the back of our house. At begging they were very attractive and about one feet high but after a month or two they withered and their leaves changed into brown. This was all because we didn’t care about them, didn’t gave them water according to their need regularly and didn’t save these plants from insects and other plants killing animals. AT last they conversed i.e wither and said we are dying and you didn’t guard us. After this incident I learned what and how plants speak?
Finally we came to know that plants are one of the most particular organism in the whole world. Plants can speak, can grow, are sources of many stuffs and are important for the life of other organisms. We should understand the plants that what they speak and what they want. We should gave plants the value they need in the environment. In last we came to this important point that “ Plants have the power to speak a great language “.
Written by: Muhammad Umair
Class: 10th
School: IMSB g10/3, Islamabad
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