Do you know: can plants speak?

Do you know: can plants speak?
By Euronews
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Stefano Mancuso
Plant scientist

“We know that plants are able to speak, but we know just few words of their vocabulary.

Most of the signals that plants exchanges among them are chemicals volatiles, molecules moving in the air, but we know the meaning of these messages, just for few of these molecules.

Mostly they are alarm molecules, but we know excactly that plants are not just able to exchange alarm signals, but they are able also to exchange informations, about the environment, informations about the soil, informations about the social neighboring.

When we smell a rose what we are smelling is actually a message for pollinators, for insects. Many of them we humans are able to sense with our nose, many of them, not. In this case we need to analyze the air and to find the hundreds and thousands of messages that plants are able to exchange.

In the next years we hope to complete the frame and to be able to understand what the plants are exchanging each other.

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