A Plant that “Knows” Kin from Strangers
searocket plants (cakile maritima)
In another addition to the “secret life” (and mysterious abilities) of plants, a recent study demonstrated that a native, perennial plant, The Great Lakes Searocket (Cakile edentula), responds to the presence of related and non-related plants differently.
If the searocket is place in beds with plants that are not related to it, it will begin to stimulate its root system to grow more rapidly, which is a tactic that many plants use automatically in order to compete with others (for space, light, nutrients, etc.), indiscriminate of relatedness. But when placed in pots with related (sibling) plants, the searocket does not do this. Somehow–and no one has discovered how yet–the plant is able to detect similarities and differences (perhaps genetic, chemical, or physiological) in its local, vegetative environment. Many animals are not able to do this.
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The study, by S. A. Dudley and A. L. File, was reported in Biology Letters in 2008. So far, there has been no follow up study to determine any influencing or controlling factors for this sentient capability.
Cakile is genus of plant native to Asia, North America, and Europe. The European variety (Cakile maritima) has become an invasive species in the U.S. The searocket is similar in appearance to the wild radish (they are members of the same family Brassicaceae) and it prefers conditions near large bodies of water. It is not clear if this kinship “knowing” capacity is also possessed by other other species in this genus.
It may be that differing micro-organisms in the soil, adapting to the different plants, secret chemical signals that the other microbes (in the sea rocket, for example) detect, and these in turn communicate to the host plant, which then responds by activating the genes controlling root growth (see my earlier post: Micro-Organisms Can “Predict” Enviro Changes, Proving Basic Assumptions Wrong
photo: Janke (on a sandy beach in Hanko, Finland) on wikipedia.org - CC - By - SA
