plant behavior Quotes

The rose has no 'Why?' It flowers because it flowers.

What are plants doing? What are plants all about? They serve human beings by being decorative, but what is it from its own point of view? It's using up air; it's using up energy. It's really not doing anything except being ornamental. And yet here's this whole vegetable world, cactus plants, trees, roses, tulips, and edible vegetables, like cabbages, celery, lettuce - they're all doing this dance.

All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.

Call any vegetable and the chances are good that the vegetable will respond to you.

While both plants and animals awaken via distinct changes in metabolic functioning, most plants prefer to err on the side of caution, waiting for hints of full-on summer before they bloom.

Yes, I do talk to my trees. I did say to one 'You'd better smarten yourself up or you'll be gone' and the next year, well, you've never seen such a mass of flowers.

The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.

But one, the lofty follower of the Sun, Sad when he sets, shuts up her yellow leaves Drooping all night; and, when he warm returns, Points her enamoured bosom to his ray.

I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight.

Plants do everything animals do, but slowly. They migrate, communicate, deceive, stalk their food and, with an ostentation of styles and perfumes to put the animal kingdom to shame, they make love. It's just that catching them in flagrante delicto might require time-lapse photography.

A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.

We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology, their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life.

Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.

People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

If the flower were not attached to its stem, it would flee at the approach of man, like the insect or the bird; for the attribute of man on the earth, at least as long as he does not better understand his role, is to worry and frighten what he is not interested in taming for utilitarian purposes. Man is skillful in mistreating everything he can use

The plant is blind but it knows enough to keep pushing upwards towards the light, and it will continue to do this in the face of endless discouragements.

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,The humble sheep a threat'ning horn:While the Lily white shall in love delight,Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.

The world of organisms, of animals and plants, is built up of individuals. I like to think, then, of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual-of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities.

It would never occur to most of us that 'plants' say anything at all, except in terms of what we read into them, or try to use them for. Yet in their responses to this wonderfully rhythmic and varying earth they are the most expressive of all forms of life.

If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes.

Redwoods flourish in fog, but they don't like salt air. They tend to appear in valleys that are just out of sight of the sea. In their relationship with the sea, redwoods are like cats that long to be stroked but are shy to the touch.