Do plants possess true intelligence?

Plant intelligence is a field of study exploring how plants process information from their environment through intentional and flexible behavior. While popular science embraces terms like plant neurobiology and plant arithmetic, most plant scientists reject these labels because plants lack neurons and consciousness. Researchers continue to debate how to appropriately describe plant cognitive abilities without using misleading terminology.

What we know

• Plant intelligence is defined as intentional and flexible behavior that helps an organism achieve its goals and process environmental information. [2]
• Plant neurobiology is a subfield that claims plants possess cognitive abilities such as anticipation, decision making, learning, and memory. [2]
• Certain plants, including the Venus flytrap and Arabidopsis thaliana, appear to perform arithmetic operations as part of a number sense. [3]
• Stefano Mancuso is an Italian botanist and professor known for his research on plant intelligence and his direction of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology. [5]

Still open

• Most plant scientists reject the terminology of plant neurobiology as misleading since plants lack neurons and consciousness, avoiding the term intelligence in published research despite its popularity in science writing.

Where to go next

• a case in pointWhat is plant arithmetic?
• whoWho is Stefano Mancuso?
• how it workedWhat is plant neurobiology?
• compared withHow does cognition relate to artificial intelligence?
• the bigger pictureWhat is general cognition in biology?
• an unexpected connectionHow do plants and artificial intelligence both simulate cognitive tasks?Both fields study how non-human systems—whether biological organisms without neurons or computational machines—perform tasks like learning, decision-making, and problem-solving.

Sources

• [1]plant cognition (Wikidata Q25038122) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Plant intelligence · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Plant arithmetic · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]Artificial intelligence · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Stefano Mancuso · CC BY-SA 4.0