CAN PLANTS SEE ?

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, 25 April 1891, Page 4

CAN PLANTS SEE ?

' The candid observer must admit that many plants act as if they had the faculty of seeing. At any rate they manage to find food and support by some special sense which the unscientific mind cannot name any better than to call it sight. Witness the following story told by a lady long resident in India : — " My husband has broached a theory that I cannot remember to have met with before, namely, that creeping plants can see, or at any rate have some faculty equalling sight He was sitting on the verandah with one foot up against a large pillar, near to which grows a kind of convolvulus. Its tendrils were leaning over into the verandah, and to his surprise he noticed that they were visibly turning toward his leg. He remained in the same position and in less than an hour the tendrils had laid themselves over his leg. "This was in the early morning, and when at breakfast he told me of this di.s covery we determined to' make furtr.cr_e.\ peri men ts. When we went out into the verandah, the tendrils had turned tlieii heads back to the railing in dis^u t. Wt got a pole and leaned it up again.st the pillar, quite 12 inches from the nearest sprays of convolvulus. f "In 10 minutes they had. begun to curve themselves in that direction, and acted exactly as you might fancy a : very slowsnake would do if he wished to reach anything. The upper tendrils bent down, and the side ones curved themselves until thfcy touched the pole, and in a few hours were twisted quite around it. " It was on the side away from the light, and excepting the faculty of sight, we can think of no other means by which the tendrils could be aware that the pole had been placed there. They had tc turn away from the light to reach it, and they set themselves In motion visibly within a fesv minutes of the ip oto's Iwiog thw," -