not avatar if you on about me you might like reading this killerox unless you already done this in your studies not sure some reading material for everyone this is what i was thinking for the males,such a amazing little world plant life i can see why you would want to study an train etc
Consider how a plant reacts to day and night. "Waking up" is a big change for a vascular plant. The moment the lights turn on in a greenhouse or grow room, crops undergo a grand shift in molecular and anatomical processes. In C3 plants' stomata are closed in the dark, so after sunrise they open wide and begin to release moisture into the air. Transpiration starts in the morning, and this could be considered a physiological sign that plants are now awake. At night the stomata close, and the humid exhalation of water vapor stops.
Once light levels are high enough, the green photosynthetic membranes inside cells repolarize and metabolic pools recharge and replenish. Chloroplasts heat up and become photoelectric battery (i.e. ATP) chargers and, with the first morning light, daytime biosynthesis begins. At night, with stomata closed, plants cease making proteins that consume energy and enzymes that drive photosynthesis and most other biosynthetic pathways—they reduce metabolism to almost zero as they "sleep".
One of the biggest contrasts between day and night for plants involves the concentrations of hormones called phytochromes. These are light-sensitive hormones found in all leaves that essentially wake up the plant's genetic mechanisms to face the new day when the lights come on. They also control the genetic switches that direct growth by plants, and determine all growth responses such as when plants grow vegetatively or whether they bloom. Phytochromes are the time-keeper hormones in plants, just as melatonin secreted from the pineal gland regulates the sense of time in animals. Although plants have not evolved endocrine glands and neurons, they do sense time in a remarkably similar way using their phytochromes. We can see by this similarity that at least on some level plants share with animals the ability to tell night from day and to measure time in a meaningful way—certainly both basic functions we recognize in "conscious" organisms.
Communication
We know that plants can communicate using chemical signals, but does this signify actual consciousness? The ability to communicate—information being sent, received and processed—would seem to imply at least a basic level of chemical awareness in plants.
There are two kinds of plant communication that operate by the exchange of chemical signals—above-ground and below-ground. Above-ground communication happens when a wounded shoot causes the release of volatile phenolic compounds such as jasmonic acid and water-soluble salicylic acid. When a plant is attacked by an insect predator it signals to other plants via these airborne biochemicals to increase their immune defences before the pests reach them. This is an example of how plants are aware of what is happening above ground in their whole ecosystem. These volatile compounds have a direct effect on gene expression—new proteins and molecules are made in response to these volatile cues. It seems clear that in this way plants have a broadcast method of communicating to the whole community of plants around them.
Below ground as well, a similar exchange of molecules is going on all the time at a very intimate level between individual plants and Mycorrhizae, which are the symbiotic fungi growing inside and between the roots of plants. Separate plants exchange metabolites and chemical resources through their roots using the bridges created by the mycelial growth of Mycorrhizae. These include biomolecules made in the leaves of one plant that are carried via the subterranean network to another plant's roots. This below-ground movement of biosynthesized molecules between plants is a second form of biochemical communication—the exchanges represent expressions of active growth from the canopy above the ground and are plant-secreted signals that are broadcast underground.
Plant hormones versus neuotransmitters
Plant neurobiology, a new field of scientific research, assumes plants possess most of the same fundamental capacities animals use to be conscious. Plant neurobiology is the study of how plants transmit information via fast-acting electrical signals, vessicle-mediated auxin transport from cell to cell and long-distance communication via volatile phenolics.
Plant hormones like auxins, cytokinins and giberellins are used by plants in ways that are identical to how neurotransmitters or neurohormones are involved in animal nervous systems. Auxins are especially comparable to plant neurotransmitters—the molecular structure of the auxin molecule is very similar to mammalian tryptamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin, melatonin and others secreted by the brain. Interestingly, plants also synthesize melatonin and serotonin, which are key animal neurotransmitters.
Plant neurobiologists study how hormones like auxins travel up the plant's cellular network in concentrated waves, forming zones of high auxin content separated by gaps of less auxin, moving at measurable rates of inches per hour. These waves of auxin are perceived by the target tissues all along the distance they travel. After travelling many feet, auxin-waves reach the tips of shoots as pulses of information—information that was sent from the root tips concerning how to grow. Imagine the entire root system as an underground network that communicates to its shoot tips by a variable frequency of slow auxin pulses. Deep underground, the root system's meristematic tips communicate to the organism's extreme other end with pulses of hormones, all the way down the stem to where fruits and flowers will eventually form. In higher plants these two ends of the organism are linked by a watery vascular system in which the cell-sap, the cytoplasm, is often fused into a continuous apoplasm, a long and very electrically conductive gel, separated by vascular elements and sieve-plates. This vascular network both inside and outside cells is the plant's nervous system, conducting both neurohormone and electrical signals.
Plants cells as nerves
It's easy to imagine auxin-waves slowly moving up the plant as a primal type of neurotransmission that is "slow" relative to animal nerves. However, plants also use electrical action potentials to send signals. Because of the constant stimuli present in nature, plants are riddled with electrical impulses communicating between cells and tissues. Studies have shown that the fast electrical impulses travelling from a stressed point on a root or leaf cause the genes in other cells in the plant to turn on and make more protective kinase enzymes. These electrical messages are sent within the injured plant and communicate danger along vascular tissues all over the plant from root tip to shoot tip well in advance of the volatile jasmonate warning signals soon to follow in the air.
Plant movement
Any intentional movement—such as growing towards or away from stimuli—suggests plants are at least to some degree conscious. Plants move toward light and are affected by gravity and touch through the mechanisms we have worked out called positive phototropism, geotropism and thigmotropism, and each of these movements and growth responses by plants involves the pulsating redistribution of hormones like auxin.
Many of us have seen how sunflowers will track the sun westward until sunset, but did you know they reorient themselves to face eastward before dawn? In July, when the buds are just starting to form, they are especially phototropic. After midnight, when it is still fully nighttime and dark, Giant Russian Sunflowers already know to swing their apical floral buds to face 180 degrees the opposite way. It is the auxin pulses in the stem that control this movement, and this vivid example of phototropism does suggest that sunflowers know where to be looking for the sun long before it appears.
Do plants remember?
The most invasive plant species, like bamboo and morning glory, send exploratory roots through house foundations and under streets and grow shoot meristems all along their length."
Other expressions of plant growth form massive storage reserves underground—imagine perennial roots as a plant-consciousness memory bank. A type of vegetal "brain" would be multiple plants growing close together, such as a greenhouse crop or a natural ecosystem of plants. Any biodiverse ecosystem sustained by plants has a vegetal brain, and the more species present, the smarter the vegetal brain in that area.
Root growth underground is often the longest-lasting part of the plant organism, the last part to die or fade. Could roots be like a kind of memory? Root tips are also exploratory sense organs, looking for water, nutrients and symbionts, and over time this map of root exploration forms a gradually increasing trace or "knowledge" of the soil substrate. Roots could be "learning" about their subsoil environment as they grow, and using their exuded chemical signals to cooperate with symbiotic creatures and to avoid stress and pests as they memorize the area underground for exploitable resources.
Are they conscious?
The most invasive plant species, like bamboo and morning glory, send exploratory roots through house foundations and under streets and grow shoot meristems all along their length. Single plants or colonies of clones form a vegetal network of "plant experience" in all environments they are connected to—some trees even send roots into our homes following drainage water courses. Do they "know" what they are after, can they tell friend from foe or are they just blindly reaching for resources?
If plant consciousness is like ours, then we should see something that resembles consciousness in their growth habits. For example, can we see something like a plant memory? Do they sleep, do they communicate, are there fast electrical and neurohormonal types of cell-to-cell signaling systems in plants? It would seem that plants do in fact possess all of these traits to some degree. But what about the higher functions of consciousness? Do plants show any ability to predict the future, and do plants "decide" the best choice or course of action? We just don't know. After growing a few plants anyone might feel intuitively that consciousness is present, but for now it's in the hands of the plant neurobiologists.