Maxine

SANCTUARY

Humans consciously manipulate the flow of chemical energy between lower density and higher density forms of life. We condense and transform the energy of plants through manufacturing, through eating and breathing. Their beauty impresses our minds, and they’re sometimes encouraged to grow just for that beauty alone. Beneath plants, mechanical functions tick along. An automated struggle for survival, with victories marked by stretched roots, sunny leaves, and fresh sprouts.

Allelopathy is a word coined by Hans Molisch, from the greek words allelon and pathy, meaning mutual suffering. In managing the growth of plants, its possible to observe their interactions. Weeds and pests, but also symbiosis. Allelochemicals are produced by plants for purposes other than their own direct growth, development, and reproduction. Allelochemicals can produce excitatory effects on other plants’ health and growth, but it is far more common for them to produce inhibitory effects.

The Uaxim tree or Wild Tamarind is an interesting example of allelopathy. It produces in its leaves an amino acid that is toxic to many plants, but doesn’t effect its own seedlings. It also promotes the growth of rice but inhibits the growth of wheat. These trees were native to southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, but have been planted around the world for their usefulness and quick growth. They can grow to 20 feet tall within 3 years, they condense nitrogen in the soil, their wood can be burned for heat or pulped for paper, and their fruit can be used as a high protein feed for livestock. That fruit contains a toxic amino acid, which only allows cattle with multi-chambered stomachs containing the bacteria that can degrade the toxins to safely eat the fruit. It is classified as one of the top hundred invasive species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

This complexity became expressed when the Uaxim tree was displaced from its usual surroundings. The introduction of new plants to other plants’ usual surroundings reveals new conflicts and benefits. It is easy to anthropomorphize the properties of plants, seeing the interactions with their environment as conscious. There is famously the Mimosa Pudica, which curls its leaves and stems in a defensive response to agitation, darkness, & heat, which takes a high amount of energy. It can demonstrate habituation, which is the inhibition of responding to stimuli after repeated exposure. It “learns” that being safely dropped and raised is not worth the curling response, and can also separately learn that being lightly shaked is not worth the curling response. The Mimosa Pudica retains that information for around 40 days after acquiring the behavior. It also goes through habituation much faster under poor conditions like low nutrients. Leaders in the field of plant memory suggest that plants may store information throughout their body, communicating through calcium movement, particularly in the root system.

The activity of animal neurons seems too sensitive to initial conditions to direct itself towards conscious communication. Yet human culture flows in trends transmitting information from extra- personal sensations. The dialectic of facticity grows more condensed and foreign to the individual. Evolution through alienating old ancestral forms. Plant life seems simple and subjected to our will, but any human will only has a bit of power and knowledge behind it. A plant’s vital force is directed, sometimes like a glitch in code. The directions break down, not clear enough. In the spaces between, stalks growing at unexpected angles and roots in unexpected wiggles. The execution of a plant’s genetic information is built to wide tolerances.. The transmission of digital information is binarized.

The mechanical Mimosa Pudica, full of phytosensors, actuators, and memory resistors. The MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group has found new ways to communicate with plants. Their project Elowan has electrodes attached to the plant, read back into a computer making decisions whether to move the pot closer or further to lights opposite each other. Their Phytoactuator project

closes a Venus flytrap by electrode. Their Planta Digitalis project transforms plants into conductive pseudo-wires by having them absorb a polymer solution, which allowed them to send signals on their movement. The development of the field of Cyberbotany will be intertwined with nanotech. The low energy production and self repair of plants will become augmented. The production of more and new chemicals will create new possibilities in allelopathy. The wide tolerances in expression that even genetically modified plants express will be encircled more tightly, and the forms precisely optimized.

When human will chases so closely behind the furthest reaches of possibility that we currently imagine, understanding the new configurations of plant life alone will necessitate a revolution in what we can imagine. The old life obsolete in one leap forward, bearing down fruit and flowers twisted in shapes without name yet, and seeming far more alive than they were.

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RITUAL