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Thank you to everyone for being here.

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I'm sorry I cannot speak 
in your wonderful language,

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but it's all the same a pleasure
to be here in this wonderful place,

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the right place to speak about plants.

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OK, let's start immediately
because we have not too much time.

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And I will show you now four slides
in a very fast sequence.

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This one.

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This one.

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This one.

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And, the last one.

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Well (Laughs), this one ...

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It's a very easy psychological test

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we did some years ago 
to the university students.

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We asked these university students
to tell us what they saw in the slides.

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And 96% of the people interviewed

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told us that they saw just
deers, elks, frogs,

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and for the last slide,

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98% of the people will tell you

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that there is an adult man 
and a young girl.

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Well, all these slides have in common

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the fact that 80% of the slides 
is made by plants.

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But our brain is filtering out
all this stuff about plants.

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And, it's a well known
feature of our brain.

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It's called Plant Blindness.

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It's the inability to see or notice
the plants in the environment.

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It's a kind of tool that protects
our brain to be overloaded

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with a lot of information 
about this useless green stuff.

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We evolved in a forest

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and it was much more important for us

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to be aware of animals and other humans,

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and not to be overloaded with 
all this information about green.

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Well, this was a nice tool
at the beginning of our evolution,

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but today, it's a problem.

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Today, this Plant Blindness prevents us,
for example to know this data,

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this is the unbelievable data,

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99.7% of the biomass
of the planet is made by plants.

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So, everything that -
I would say that the life of the planet,

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it's a green place, it's a green life.

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All the animals altogether, 
human included, is just 0.3%.

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So it's unbelievable that we don't know,
actually, how these plants work

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and we are all the time underestimating
their amazing abilities.

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Well, let's have a look at the beginning,
how a plant is made.

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A plant is a sessile organism.

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Sessile means that it cannot move.

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The plants cannot move 
from one place to the other.

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But they can move a lot.

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Ops, I'm sorry, I do not know 
what's happened.

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And the second, the second point 
is that plants have no organs.

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This is an unbelievable difference
with the animals.

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So I mean - animals 
concentrate specific functions

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inside specific organs.

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So we have eyes to see, 
we have lungs for breathing,

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we have the stomach to digest and so on.

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But the plants evolved 
not to have any organs,

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because having an organ is too dangerous,

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for plants that have to be predated, 
to be eated by animals.

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So you can imagine 
that a single insect,

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just eating a little bit of your brain
would be enough to kill you, no?

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Ah, so this is why the plants 
have no organs.

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But, having no organs doesn't mean
that they have not the function.

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This is an important point.

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In other words, plants are able
to see without eyes,

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they are able to hear without hearing,

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they are able to taste, and to smell,

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and to breath without the organs.

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And they are also able
to make calculations,

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memorize, learn without brain.

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Now the point about plants
is that they cannot move.

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But actually, they move a lot.


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There are passive movements in plants,

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like in this pine cone, no?

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The opening and the closing 
of a pine cone,

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that has been used for the production
of new passive materials.

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Or, this very nice Erodium cicutarium.

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This is a seed, that you can see.

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Just with the change
in the humidity it's turning,

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and uses this ability
to enter in the soil,

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and so it's like a spermatozoa, 
it works very well,

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and you can see that some of them 
are also able to enter in the soil.

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Now, what is amazing about that

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is that they do this 
without using any energy.

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So they have no muscles,
look, it was able to enter.

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So, they use no energy,
they have no muscles,

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and it's just the way the material is made

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that is amazing, that makes possible
this wonderful movement.

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Of course, there are active movements,
some of them are very fast,

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like in the case of the venus flytrap, 
dionea, it's a carnivorous plant,

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we know that it's a very
fast movement.

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Many of them can be exhibited

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just by making a faster -
the time lapse,

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the so called... the time lapse technique.

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And so we can see this graceful movement

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like in this case, 
this a young bean moving,

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it's just three hours of time,
it's not a week.

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So the plants move a lot, 
and we can see here,

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this growing of some flowers, no?

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They grow altogether and even
this growing together is important,

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because it's an important moment 
of their social life.

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So they are really learning 
how to stay together

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during this first phase of their life.

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And now I would like to put 
our argumentation a little bit further.

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Can we tell that plants 
are conscious organisms?

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So because I'm pretty sure 
that they are intelligent,

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I will not discuss with you about that.

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Plants are intelligent, 
and they are able to solve problems,

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and this is my preferred
definition of intelligence.

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Now the point is, are plants conscious?

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Consciousness is - are plants aware of 
their position in the environment?

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So, it's a problem to find 
right definitions about consciousness.

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It's normally defined
by removing something.

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Michio Kaku is a quite famous physicist.

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And he wrote recently this book
"The Future of The Mind,"

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and as a physicist, he gave 
a definition of consciousness

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that's quite understandable.

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Michio Kaku: Consciousness is

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the number of feedback loops 
required to create a model

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of your position in space, 
with relationship to other organisms,

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and finally in relationship to time.

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Stefano: So, consciousness is just 
your ability to build a model of yourself

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in relation to the space, 
to the other organisms, and to the time.

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Are plants able to do that?

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OK. Let's have a look.

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First of all ...

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Michio Kaku: So think
of the consciousness of a thermostat.

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I believe that even a lowly thermostat 
has one unit of consciousness.

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That is, it senses
the temperature around it.

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And then we have a flower,

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a flower has maybe, 
ten units of consciousness.

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It has to understand the temperature,
the weather, humidity,

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where gravity is pointing.

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Stefano: Well, so,
for Michio Kaku, the sensing, no?

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It's the first level of consciousness.

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Plants are unbelievably more
sensitive than animals.

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A single plant is able to detect

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at least 20 different chemical 
and physical parameters all the time.

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Among them, there are all the --
our common sense, let's say,

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but also something a little bit strange,

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as electrical gradient,
chemical gradient, magnetic fields,

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and, or, heavy metals
and so on, pathogens.

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So we know that plants, for example,

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are very sensitive to gravity.

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And as every living organism 
on the Earth,

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we can see here maize 
growing according to gravity.

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But it's less well known that plants
are also able to sense vibrations.

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And so we can see here 
how the roots of the plants

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grow toward the source of sound.

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So they are able to sense the sound, 
and they are able to grow

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toward the source of the sound.

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And also, they are able to 
produce a sound.

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(Clicking)

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This kind of click is very amplified sound

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of a growing ... growing roots.

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So, when the roots during -

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this is just in real time, 
so it's few times, few seconds.

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A growing root is producing
specific sounds

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that probably are used 
by the other root apex,

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to have information about
the position of the roots in the soil.

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Well, let's go on to the second point,

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to the first level 
of consciousness, space.

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Michio Kaku: And then finally
we go into the reptilian brain,

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which I call level-one consciousness,

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and reptiles basically have 
a very good understanding

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of their position in space.

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Especially because they have to
lunge out, and grab pray.

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Stefano: OK, so, reptiles are 
very well aware of the space.

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Is this the same for the plants?
Let's have a look.

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This is a, uh, this is a cuscuta plant.

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Cuscuta plant is a parasitic plant

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that needs to find a host 
in a very short time before dying.

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And you can see how this plant
is immediately directing

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towards the tomato plant, finds it


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and parasitising the tomato plant.

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Well, this is quite trivial.

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It's just a chemical driving 
the information up to the plant.

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It's volatile.

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But, look at this case.

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This is the same plant 
that has to take a decision,

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because it's in the middle,
between wheat and tomato.

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And all the time, it's choosing tomato.

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Well, because tomato, it's
much much easier to parasitise.

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But if there is no tomato, 
even wheat can work.

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OK, and this is something simple.

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Let's, let's do something 
a little bit more curious.

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This is a bean in my lab
and this is a support. 


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You can see how it is moving,
for reaching the support.

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So I mean, this plant knows exactly
where the support is, the pole is.

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And it's trying to do
all its best for reaching it.

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I don't know if you can see,

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but the apex of the shoots
already made a kind of hook

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in the right position, even if the plant
didn't touch until now, the support.

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And you can see also the movement,

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it's a wonderful movement. 
It's just, in this case, just passive,

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just based on multi traders, 
look at the hook, in the apex.

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And, almost ...

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Eh?

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Another try, and it's not enough.

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And you can almost feel the effort, no?

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And, and look at the leaves now, 
that they reach the support.

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Now, it's much much quieter, calmer.

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Anyway, so we know that the bean
is aware of the pole.

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OK? It's the result of something 
more impressive

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because, look in this case,
I am putting a pole among two beans.

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So, there is the sensing phase.

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They know there is a pole
and they start to compete.

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And look when the first one
is winning, the winner,

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the other one changes direction.

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So, you can repeat 
this experiment 100 times,

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and 100 times you will get 
the same result.

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00:14:48,284 --> 00:14:54,354
So, this means that the second plant 
is not just aware of the support,

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it's also aware of another
organism, of another plant,

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and it is aware of what 
the other plant is able to do. OK?

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Great. Social life.

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Michio Kaku: Then we have level-two 
consciousness, the monkey consciousness.

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The consciousness of emotions, 
social hierarchy.

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Where are we in relationship to the tribe?

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Stefano: OK. I don't want to 
spend too much time,

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because the social life of the plants
is very well known.

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Plants are social organisms,

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at any level of their evolution, 
from Chlamydomonas -

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this is a single algae, unicellular algae
that shows weird behaviour.

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So, a kind of social movement 
like the one of the hands.

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These winged shoots, look how
they oscillate altogether.

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OK, this is a, this is something
very easy to do, but it's not easy at all.

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You need to be in sync
with your neighbor to do this,

225
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so you need to be well aware of what 
the movement of your neighbors are.

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And kin recognition.

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It's something unbelievably interesting.

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So we know that today 
that plants have different behaviour

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according to the degree 
of relativeness of the other plants.

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So, normally, for example, beans, 
the very common bean, are cooperating,

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when they are in the same pot, 
they are related.

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But when the two plants are unrelated,
they are normally competing.

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And, in a wood, it's a huge network

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of plants interacting each other.

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For example, we know that -
this is a graph showing that a single tree

236
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is linked to 47 different trees, 
and they use

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this network for sharing information,

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for sharing even food and water,
nutrients and water.

239
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Well, there is much more with plants.

240
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We have not too much
time to show all of the -

241
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the wonderful things about plants.

242
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Plants, for example, are able to memorize.

243
00:17:36,393 --> 00:17:38,723
They are able to memorize and to learn.

244
00:17:39,161 --> 00:17:43,331
We demonstrated just a few months ago 
that it's possible to teach

245
00:17:43,331 --> 00:17:46,811
a mimosa sensitive plant 
not to close anymore

246
00:17:46,811 --> 00:17:49,691
when there is a non dangerous stimulus.

247
00:17:50,146 --> 00:17:57,036
And, this sensitive plant is able to 
maintain the information for 40 days.

248
00:17:57,036 --> 00:18:02,346
So I mean, the memory lasts 
at least 40 days. That is a lot.

249
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And in the average, the memory 
of an insect is just 24 hours.

250
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Even for me, 40 days is a lot.

251
00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:12,750
(Laughter)

252
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And so, it's amazing to see that

253
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plants are able to
maintain information for so long.

254
00:18:21,407 --> 00:18:24,827
And, just a last thing.

255
00:18:25,067 --> 00:18:27,937
From my point of view,


256
00:18:27,937 --> 00:18:32,877
intelligence and consciousness are
real biological phenomenons.

257
00:18:33,267 --> 00:18:35,917
So they can be studied, as real,

258
00:18:35,917 --> 00:18:39,697
they need to be studied as 
real biological phenomenons.

259
00:18:40,096 --> 00:18:43,046
And it's something
like reproduction, I mean,

260
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reproduction is completely different 
in bacteria, phangiae, and humans. OK?

261
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But there is a common background 


262
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that means that the phenomenon 
is reproduction,

263
00:18:57,096 --> 00:19:02,346
it's the same for intelligence, 
it's different, but always the same.

264
00:19:02,634 --> 00:19:03,714
Thank you very much.

265
00:19:03,714 --> 00:19:05,951
(Applause)