Can Plants Perceive Us? The Opinion of Professor Suzanne Silard

 

What could be more holobiontic than this? Words of Suzanne Simard, as reported by the New York times.

 

“I think these trees are very perceptive,” she said. “Very perceptive of who’s growing around them. I’m really interested in whether they perceive us.” I asked her to clarify what she meant. Simard explained that trees sense nearby plants and animals and alter their behavior accordingly: The gnashing mandibles of an insect might prompt the production of chemical defenses, for example. Some studies have even suggested that plant roots grow toward the sound of running water and that certain flowering plants sweeten their nectar when they detect a bee’s wing beats. “Trees perceive lots of things,” Simard said. “So why not us, too?”

 

A New Holobiont in Gaia's Family

 

Had you ever heard of the "Plastisphere"? Well, it is a new ecosystem that thrives on the plastic islands in the sea created by human activity. 

 

The term was coined in 2013, but these little critters are still thriving nowadays as you can see in a more recent article. 

 

For sure, they'll soon have plenty of food in the form of the six billion (yes, 6x10^9!) plastic face masks discarded everyday by humankind and, eventually, ending up floating somewhere in the ocean. 

 

And here is how the plastic plate appears to our little friends, the microbes. Bon Appetit!

 

 

The Wolf Song. A Few Minutes of Bliss in a Difficult Time

A splendid song, splendidly sung by Jonna Jinton, Swedish singer. The images are haunting and beautiful, suggesting the beauty of the forest inhabited by wolves, humans, and other creatures that form a single system, holobionts within the greater holobiont that covers the land. A few minutes of bliss, welcome in the difficult times we are living. 

These are the words in Swedish ("vargen" means wolves) -- Here you can find a more traditional version. Note how gentle and compassionate is the song, with the mother understanding the hunger and the distress of the wolf and willing to give it a pig tail or a chicken shank.

Vargen ylar i natten skog
Han vill men kan inte sova
Hungern river i hans varga buk
O det är kallt i hans stova

Du varg du varg, kom inte hit
Ungen min får du aldrig

Vargen ylar i natten skog
Ylar av hunger o klagar
Men jag ska gen en grisa svans
Sånt passar i varga magar

Du varg du varg, kom inte hit
Ungen min får du aldrig

Sov mitt barn i bädden hos mor
Låt vargen yla i natten
Men jag ska gen en hönsa skank
Om ingen annan har tatt den

Du varg du varg kom inte hit
Ungen får du aldrig
Ooo
Ungen den får du aldrig

And here is a version in English (translated using Google, revised using common sense, as I don't speak Swedish. May not be perfect).

The wolf howls in the night forest 

He wants to but cannot sleep 

Hunger tears in his wolf belly 

Oh, it's cold in his den

You wolf you wolf, do not come here 

You'll never get my kid 

The wolf howls in the night forest 

Howls of hunger and complains 

But I'm gonna give it a pig tail 

That kind of thing fits in wolf stomachs 

You wolf you wolf, do not come here 

You'll never get my kid 

My child slept in her mother's bed 

Let the wolf howl at night 

But I'm gonna give it a chicken shank 

If no one else has taken it 

You wolf you wolf do not come here 

You never get the kid 

Ooo 

My kid, you'll never get it

Sex Among Holobionts: Love is a Horizontal Thing

 

  Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is reported to have said, "Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love."  His paintings have a certain "holobiontic" quality. This one, "Les Amoureux de Vence" was painted in 1957,

 

What do holobionts, empathy, and harmony have in common with sex? One thing: they are all forms of horizontal transmission of information. We tend to see ourselves as multicellular organisms and, for us, sex is indeed a "horizontal" thing, in a certain sense. 

But, sex was not invented by multicellular creatures. On this planet, sex is mostly something that bacteria engage in, freely exchanging genetic materials among themselves. It is free love that goes on all the time among single-celled creatures. And it is the way they evolve. It is by exchanging genetic materials that bacteria have become more and more capable to resist to the human attacks against them by means of antibiotics.

And even viruses, which can't reproduce by themselves, have sex with each other. It is just that they can only do that when two different viruses find themselves in the same host cell. That can become even a little weird when the two viruses come from different previous hosts, say a pangolin and a human being. In any case, viruses evolve very fast, that's why almost every year a new wave of influenza spreads over the world. 

For larger holobionts, such as human beings, the situation is different when you consider the reproductive mechanism of the main organism, the human one. Two human organisms exchange genetic information, but then this information must be "read" in a complex process that involves the birth of a new human being (and, unfortunately, the death of the old one). It is slow: in terms of evolutionary prowess, viruses and bacteria run circles around us. Fortunately, our immune system can also change fast enough to match the new threats, and we are also defended by the "good" biome that form the human holobiont, the bacterial and viral symbionts we carry with us. And we are part of the larger holobiont we call the ecosystem.

Holobionts are fractal systems: the true embodiment of the poem of Jonathan Swift

The Vermin only teaze and pinch
Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum:

And so it goes.

Biophobia: one more example of our fear of Nature and of ourselves

 

 

A clip from "Dust."  They are a company specialized in airing short sfi-fi films. The quality of what you can see is very variable, goes from the boring to the silly, includes the very clever, and sometimes true gems. 

I thought I could inflict on you this clip not because it is especially good, but not so bad, either. It may be good as entertainment. It has distinct "1950s" feel and it could go in the same category as the old "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." What's strange is that it was made in 2020 and one could think we had overcome that attitude of old that saw non-human creatures as monsters. 

Here, we have a good example of the current wave of "biophobia" -- it is the story of a young woman who is bitten by a mosquito. Then, the mosquito flies to meet a subterranean monster who uses the genetic information contained in the woman's blood to create a clone of her.

As I said, not bad as entertainment but, as biophobia goes, this is the way many of us see the creatures that surround us. Creatures to be kept away from our bodies as much as possible, least we'd be contaminated. And, in the end, I think the clip has a logic that perhaps even its authors didn't realize: it is our fear of sickness, our fear of death, our fear of bodily decay. All amplified by the tiny monster we call coronavirus -- a name that brings a hint of  the crown that death used to wear in medieval iconography, a symbol of power.

All fears that have taken over our minds everywhere. And how the woman of the clip sees he double is as she sees herself as in a mirror. It tells us a lot of how we see ourselves nowadays. We are scared of our fellow human beings, a monstruous, innatural, unimaginable (up to now) feeling. It is, first of all, a sickness of the mind. We will not be healed we come to a pact with nature, only then we'll be able to understand who we are. Onward, fellow holobionts!

  

 

Braiding Sweetgrass

 

A contribute by Robinne Gray

 

When Erik asked me about potentially leading a book discussion, I told him there are two books that really rocked my world(view), one is Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass The other is Thomas Berry's The Great Work, which I'd love to revisit in 2021.

For those unfamiliar with this book and author, a little enticement: Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi woman who is also a plant ecologist and professor in the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. So she is uniquely positioned to bring together two very different ways of engaging with the natural world in a way that (IMO) the world really needs. It helps that she's a wonderful writer, so her work is getting a lot of attention and inspiring many people. 

I'm a lifelong reader who hasn't participated in many book discussions because I'm stubborn and only want to read what I choose and when - and also because I don't always finish a given book in a timely way, and may be reading several books at once. An encouragement I offer is: Braiding Sweetgrass is a series of essays, so even if you make time to read one or two of them to get a taste, it would be wonderful to have you be part of our discussion of this rich work!  I've included a quote from the book below.

 Note: this text appeared in the discussion group "Gaian Conversations" kept by Erik Assadourian and is published here by kind permission of the author. If you are interested in joining the discussion group, write to Erik at info(thingything)gaianism.org

 

Where you could buy live lice in Florence, 50 years ago.

 

According to what I heard from the people who remember these things, I think I was able to locate where you could buy live lice in Florence to swallow to cure your jaundice. A typical holobiont thing to do. 

The old lady who sold these lice lived - I believe - in the house with the small arched door of this street called "Via Camaldoli." She was called "La Pidocchina," that is, "the little lady louse."

I didn't try to ring the bell to ask if someone in there still sold live lice. But, who knows?