In January this year I made a video about Botanic behaviour and at the beginning of March I wrote an update. When I had already planned to write a new update, I met someone who graduated from Wageningen University quite some time ago.
We met because of the most important political topic of today (trans-genderism) but upon entering my living room his attention was naturally drawn to the large Monstera Deliciosa that takes up about three square meters of it.
My video dealt with observations and experiments with this special house plant, called Monstera Deliciosa, especially its aerial roots. The most surprising discovery I spoke of was the fact that scientific papers on plant behavior have only been written since the beginning of the 21st century.
In the first update I wrote about the new experiment I had started. I investigated the way and the strength with which different types of cuttings formed (side) shoots. The first to form and the fastest to grow was that which sprang from a piece of trunk with no leaf and no common root.
When the original plant, the specimen with normal roots, started to grow vigorously again, the growth rate of the cuttings seemed to slow down.
After removing the part of the original plant above the ground, the shoot from that most unlikely cutting in particular grew faster again.
All of the original plant above the soil removed.
After the original one was well above ground with a new shoot however, the growth rate of those unlikely cuttings seemed to slow down again.
Changing speed of growing different types of growing points.
Meanwhile I made some more observations on aerial roots of the ‘mother’ plant.
Aerial roots heading in different directions. Some clearly bent due to gravity, but not all.
Has this proven anything about the behavior of this plant species? Of course not. I describe these developments here just to emphasize that serious science starts with observations.
It was nice to get some confirmation from a Wageningen graduate. Indeed: irrefutably processing and transmission of information takes place in plants too.
Incidentally, the University of Wageningen can be called progressive and successful, but also rather questionable given the relationship with the Word Economic Forum.
Link to more recent texts by Germen Roding, the abovementioned biologist.