I help people navigate health and technology.
Sunflowers have always been my favorite flower and now I know why: They turn to each other for help.
Image: My backyard sunflower patch at its midsummer height (I gave up on growing vegetables this year and reaped a crop of beauty instead).
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Love that Susannah! I will share your quote in some of my upcoming presentations!
Thanks, Perry! It’s a direct quote from The World’s story, so please credit them.
Do you know about Michael Pollan’s work looking into intelligent plants? I also recommend The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, a lovely book by Peter Wohlleben (reviewed here by Alva Noë).
This sure is pretty – as is that recording. Thank you for sharing.
The essence and brilliance of micro-style!
Sorry to burst the bubble. But as nice as this anecdote is, it’s not true. Sunflowers do not turn to each other. Botanists will tell you this is unscientific and an urban myth.
Fact checking is always welcome! Your comment inspired me to dig deeper (thank you for the prompt and the chance to use that terrible pun).
Here is the research being featured in the audio clip above:
Ljubotina Megan K. and Cahill James F. (2019) Effects of neighbour location and nutrient distributions on root foraging behaviour of the common sunflowerProc. R. Soc. B.28620190955
http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0955
Happily, it’s available to read open-source. Here is the key quote from the abstract (emphasis added):
“Sunflowers grown alone proliferated more roots within high-nutrient patches than lower-nutrient soil. Plants decreased root proliferation within a high-nutrient patch when it was equidistant to a neighbour. Conversely, plants increased root proliferation when they were in closer proximity to the patch relative to a nearby neighbour. Such contingent responses may allow sunflowers to avoid competition in highly contested patches, but to also pre-empt soil resources from neighbours when they have better access to a high-quality patch. We also compared patch occupancy by sunflowers grown alone with two equidistant high-quality patches to occupancy by sunflowers grown with two high-quality patches and a neighbour. Plants grown with a neighbour decreased root length within shared patches but did not increase root length within high-quality patches they were in closer proximity to, perhaps because resource pre-emption may be less important for individuals when resources are more abundant. These results show that nutrient foraging responses in plants can be socially contingent, and that plants may account for the possibility of pre-empting limited resources in their foraging decisions.”
Further, here’s a January 2019 article in Science citing other researchers’ work in this area:
Once considered outlandish, the idea that plants help their relatives is taking root, by Elizabeth Pennisi
Pennisi’s article led me to the sunflower-specific research conducted by Jorge Casal and his colleagues:
Light-mediated self-organization in sunflower stands increases oil yield in the field
Mónica López Pereira, Victor O. Sadras, William Batista, Jorge J. Casal, Antonio J. Hall
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jul 2017, 114 (30) 7975-7980; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618990114
Again, hooray for open-access so we can read the article! Here’s the key quote from the abstract for those who just want the gist:
“Here, we show that sunflower plants cultivated in high-density stands perceive light signals from their immediate neighbors, adopt alternate positions of their single stem along the crop row, and collectively increase production per unit land area. This process is a case where a communicative sensory network leads to self-organization in plants, without changes in demography.”
Fascinating!
Simon, thanks again for your comment. Maybe you were thinking of the debunked idea that the sounds emitted by sunflowers can be recorded? I found this Snopes article on that topic.
You’re taking your research out of context, or at best, interpreting it in a way that is as misleading as the myth. The research shows that sunflowers do rely on one another for certain physiological functions (i.e. ensuring minimal nutrient competition and organizing in a row in a way that maximizes photosynthesis), but the myth that Simon is referring to (and that is implied by your post) is that sunflowers literally face each other to share energy when there’s no sun. Perhaps you meant “they turn to each other for help” in a non-literal sense, but I assure you that Simon was referring the the very common myth based on the literal interpretation of the quote you shared.
I take your point. The headline is not precise. By using “turn to each other” instead of, perhaps, “reach out through the soil” the headline writer for The World was anthropomorphizing in a way that would rankle a botanist. They took poetic license that you and Simon (and others) would like to revoke. Thank you for letting me know and, if you have time, I’d love to hear how you found this post — through a search? Or was it posted on another blog or in a community discussion?
Other posts I’ve written have taken on a life of their own, getting shared in niche communities, such as: Hack needed: Tiny pills, trembling hands. People have found it through searches and in communities related to cerebral palsy, essential tremor, Parkinsons, and more. I wrote it quickly in 2015 (it’s almost as short as this post) and yet it has sparked a discussion that continues, with new comments as recently as August.
The “long tail” of the internet is truly amazing. Thanks for stopping by to share your perspective.