In article ,
Bill who putters wrote:

"The idea that plants basically have nerves ‹ a conclusion that grows
out of hard-to-interpret observations of electrical activity in plant
tissue ‹ has ignited a thunderstorm of its own among plant scientists in
recent years.
³The use of the word intelligence (with or without swarm) simply
humanizes (or animalizes, since they talk about swarms) the situation,²
says David Robinson or the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Such
³silly² terminology, in his words, ³reduces serious plant science to the
level of esoterics.²
However, he¹s not disputing the ability of plants to solve complicated
strategic problems. ³Of course,² he says, ³it¹s well known that roots
have Œcognitive¹ abilities.²"

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...n/Rooting_for_
swarm_intelligence_in_plants

Seems to me that "cognition" would be a more humanizing term to apply to
plants than the broader, imho, "intelligence". Silly semantics aside -
what I want to know is, are plants self-aware?