The Presidential Library caring for the environment

With the onset of spring, many people begin to think about the beginning of the summer season. Some make the first planting of seeds, with attention and care follow the seedlings. Others are looking forward to the appearance of the first green leaves on the branches of trees. But do plants feel this care, do they know how to rejoice, for example, in spring, like people, and do they feel if at least one leaf is torn from them? Answers to such questions are available in the collections of the Presidential Library.

Of course, plants do not express their feelings, but this does not mean that they are inert. Modern researchers say that if a person reacts to light, sound, heat, taste and smell, then plants, in addition, feel electric and magnetic fields, gravity, the composition and slope of the soil, the presence of harmful microorganisms and heavy metals. That is, their picture of the world is much more saturated than ours.

Scientists have been thinking about whether plants can feel for a long time. Among them is the French scientist Henri Coupin (1868–1937). He lived and worked in Paris, was a doctor of natural sciences, head of the department of natural sciences at the Sorbonne. Later, due to his almost complete deafness, he had to give up teaching, but this did not prevent the scientist from being highly respected among colleagues and students. In addition to scientific research, he was engaged in the popularization of science. His articles for a wide range of readers were published, including in Russia. The Presidential Library's collections contain the journal Bulletin of Knowledge, which published its article About the Feelings of Plants.

Coupin writes that the most common sense in plants is the sense of sight. Thanks to him, plants "feel" the light, but not individual objects. There is something similar in the animal world, for example, in earthworms, oysters, corals, which “shrink” when a ray of the sun falls on them. To make sure that the plant "sees" the light, it is enough to plant it in a room where there is only one window, and the stems grow towards it. Coupin called this phenomenon positive heliotropism. But the roots, on the contrary, have negative heliotropism, that is, they avoid light, “like faces that, being endowed with too light-sensitive eyes, hide in the shade if the sun shines too brightly.”

Using the love of plants for light, you can even perform some tricks. For example, put microscopic algae in a test tube and temporarily darken its walls, leaving it unpainted, for example, the inscription Bulletin of Knowledge. A few hours later, the algae will settle where there is light, and we, having wiped off the paint, will find the inscription Bulletin of Knowledge already made of algae, which, as Coupin figuratively writes, eagerly rushed to the window to see what was happening.

In addition, a red dot can be found in some algae, which is surprisingly similar to the eye.

The sense of touch is very common among plants. They are often unpleasant to touch. Coupin cites as an example a mimosa, which, at the slightest touch, folds and lowers down, hides, the leaves. Scientists already then, wanting to understand how a plant moves without muscles, studied the mechanism of this action. It turned out that this is possible thanks to special elongated cells interconnected by very thin holes.

One of the most striking examples is the flycatcher leaf. When an insect sits on the cup of the plant, both halves of a leaf is folded - and the "food" is caught. Moreover, slamming occurs only if one of the three hairs located in the center of the cup is touched. In this case, scientists are already talking about the presence of real organs of touch in the plant, like in most animals.

Or take, for example, the tendrils of a melon or grape, with which they are attached to neighboring objects. If during growth they do not meet with support, then, according to Coupin, they are like “souls filled with sorrow, as if they are waiting for something”. But if you give them a support, the plant will feel it with its tendrils and in a few hours wrap itself around it.

Coupin wrote that plants also have a sense of taste. If you throw “different particles” into a pond with algae, you can see that the algae will surround, “select”, only some of them. Inedible “treats” will be ignored. Or if you put a piece of meat or an insect on a sundew leaf, it will immediately catch this prey by slamming its tentacles over it. And if you do such an experiment, taking something inedible, for example, a pebble, then the plant will not react.

Plants also have one special sense, which Coupin calls the "sense of direction in space". If, for example, the root of a plant is placed horizontally, then soon it is possible to see how it rushes to the center of the Earth. And if you do the same with the stem, then, on the contrary, it will grow towards the sky.

Does the plant feel pain? There are studies that show that tearing off a leaf in any case does not go unnoticed by the plant. If you examine a half of a torn-off leaf of St. John's wort under a microscope, one can see that the initially "calm" green chlorophyll cells after 10-15 minutes begin to move chaotically, slowly and quickly, and finally "complete disorder" sets in. Coupin writes about this that "the grains of chlorophyll felt this amputation and express it in their own way".

According to various estimates, about 90% of all living organisms on our planet are plants. “King of nature”, a human being is a grain of sand against this background. But many possibilities are open to man - to learn, to study, to explore and to find the keys to understanding many processes on Earth, including biological ones. The Presidential Library preserves and makes available to readers the knowledge of previous generations, so that, having this knowledge, we become more careful about the world in which we live.

Today, the Presidential Library's collections contain more than a million depository items, many of which, including the article we talked about, are publicly available on the portal.