Watching plants move


There is something fascinating about watching time-lapse films of plants that show them moving. Plants move so imperceptibly slowly that they seem inert so it is disconcerting to see them growing and moving towards water and sunlight as if they have a sense of awareness. Here is a case where an almost dead plant comes back to life after being given water.

(Via Rusty Blazenhoff)

Comments

  1. says

    One of David Attenborough’s videos (I believe it’s “the secret life of plants” or something like that) has some time-lapses that are amazing -- they show how plants react to and try to evade predators. They’re just really slow at it. But if you speed them up, they look like what we’d otherwise recognize as life-forms showing intent.

  2. Jazzlet says

    Time lapse of brambles growing are quite frightening, the tips of the bramble sway around, seeking a place to root.

  3. avalus says

    Its Attenborougs Private Life of Plants and its amazing. You should really check it out, Mano!
    For me, it is a real feel-good series.

  4. file thirteen says

    The skeptic in me, a killjoy at heart, speculates that the plant was merely left to dehydrate and die, and the video reversed. What is that device to the left of the plant? A clock? If so, I find it suspicious that it wasn’t on during the video.

  5. Mano Singham says

    filethirteen,

    Yes, it is a clock and the time on it goes from 18:18 at the beginning to 21:40 at the end, so the more than three hours was compressed into less than two minutes.

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