Paul E. Black, Hypothetical Intelligent Plants, or, What Kind of Terminal Could a Tulip Use?, Deep Thoughts, Proceedings of Life, the Universe, & Everything XV (February/March 1997), ed. Steve Setzer and Marny K. Parkin, Provo, Utah, USA, pages 75-86. (2001)

Abstract:

    What would the dominant species of a world be like if it were a plant instead of an animal? Examining existing plants, we suggest a plausible intelligent plant. It is definitely not humanoid. Our intelligent plant is stationary, senses the environment mainly by smell, acts on the environment chemically, and lives hundreds of years.

    We explore the plants' language and how they think of the universe. We speculate on how they could communicate and how they might dominate their environment. We end by describing what kind of computer terminal a sightless and limbless species could use.

Get the paper in DVI (26k), Postscript (86k), or PDF (150k).

Get Figure 1: Young plant of Flora Famanidora (177k), Figure 2: Mature cluster plant (188k), or Figure 3: Flora Famanidora using terminal (121k),

This page's URL is /~black/Papers/lifUniEvery.html

Updated Thu Oct 4 08:31:17 2007

Go to Black's papers or NIST home page.