Nerium oleander

Plants also detect and respond to the daily cycle of light and darkness. For example, some plants open their leaves during the day to collect sunlight and then close their leaves at night to prevent water loss. Environmental stimuli that indicate changing seasons trigger other responses.

Summary: “The lightest touch from a human, animal, insect, or even plants touching each other in the wind, triggers a huge gene response in the plant,” Professor Whelan said. “Within 30 minutes of being touched, 10 per cent of the plant’s genome is altered.

While many plants release carbon dioxide, not oxygen, at night, having a few plants in the bedroom will not release enough carbon dioxide to be harmful at all. Also, not all plants release carbon dioxide at night. Some still release oxygen even when they are not in the process of photosynthesis.

It’s True—You Really Should Talk to Your Plants In a study performed by the Royal Horticultural Society, researchers discovered that talking to your plants really can help them grow faster. 1 They also found that plants grow faster to the sound of a female voice than to the sound of a male voice.

We do know that they can feel sensations. Studies show that plants can feel a touch as light as a caterpillar’s footsteps. But pain, specifically, is a defense mechanism. But plants don’t have that ability—nor do they have nervous systems or brains—so they may have no biological need to feel pain.

But since plants don’t seem to make a sound when they are plucked, cooked, popped into the mouth and chewed, the foam-in-the-mouth “animal rights” defenders think (so conveniently) that there is no cruelty in eating plants. Now, there’s proof that plants do feel and that they react against attack.

Plants use their roots to “listen in” on their neighbours, according to research that adds to evidence that plants have their own unique forms of communication.