Just finished "The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of #Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth" by Zoe Schlanger.
She was a #journalist on the climate catastrophe beat when she quit from burnout and despair and got really into #plants and the quickly evolving fields of #botany and #ecology.
#books #bookstodon @bookstodon
I liked a lot about this #book. Want to read some reasons why? 👇
I learned the term "Plant Blindness," the "tendency to view #plant life as an indistinguishable mass, a green smudge, rather than as thousands of genetically separate and fragile individuals, as distinct from one another as a lion is from a trout." (pg. 34)
This definitely describes how I've appreciated plans in an abstract way, but besides the big beautiful trees in my part of the world (Live Oaks, Bald Cypresses, etc.) I haven't done much to understand plants.
A major theme of the book (and the field of #biology and #botany according to Schlander) is #flux and change and category-resistance. Makes my #queer little heart so happy!
“There is something decidedly queer in all of this... a sense of sensual #entanglement that disregards binaries, runs across the #species boundary, and almost gleefully defies #heteronormative modes of reproduction." p. 152
Love the description of how #plants get other things (#insects, #animals, maybe humans?) to do things for them.
"To what extent are we, I wonder, yoked into plant service? We know a little now about plants' genius for synthesizing highly complex chemicals in their bodies that can influence other plants and animas in subtle and overt ways. .. The question becomes, in what ways are they influencing us?" (pg. 166)
Many of us -- myself included -- feel less depressed when gardening 🤔
#Moral inclusion and #empathy stretching are always topics of interest to me, and I loved how the authors ties an understanding of #plants to a rethinking of #ethical (and #legal) inclusion.
"It is hard to underestimate the #drama of being a #tree, or any plant. Everyone one is an unimaginable feat of luck and ingenuity. Once you know that, you can't unknow it. A new moral pocket has opened in your mind." (pg. 244)
Sophie 🏳️⚧️ 💜 🎹 🪗