Plants_Intelligence. Learning Like a Plant

Yvonne Volkart: Plants lead us to the polyphony and ecological differentiation of the world. They are special beings. Physical beings. Each species looks different and has different needs. They make the question of how we want to live concrete: do I want to work with or against nature? Then, “nature” is no longer something abstract, something distant, but a being with requirements, right next to me.

Essentially, this coincides with art and the experiences we make with it: each artwork thrives on its respective aesthetic peculiarity, on the singularity of experiencing it. Many themes are the same, but the way in which they are shaped can touch one or not.

The magazine Unter Pflanzen brings together literature and poetry, as well as texts from philosophy, art, media, literature, and natural sciences, exploring plants in each specific way as intelligent, sensitive beings. The magazine designed by the Studio Rimini Berlin allows the reader to wander through poetry and literature, through philosophical, theoretical, and essayistic formats. Interviews open up additional dimensions to the theoretical texts and provide insights into the personal stories and motivations that guide practitioners and thinkers in their research. The texts are arranged with the idea of the encounter with a plant: from getting to know each other, to the deeper conversation, to the exploration of similarities. Sometimes it is serious, sometimes cheerful, and always imbued with the desire to encounter plants in ever-new ways.

With contributions by Petra Ahne, Christina Becher, Felipe Castelblanco, Maurice Maggi, Michael Marder, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Julia Mensch, Kathrin Meyer, Frederike Middelhoff, Solvejg Nitzke, André Geremia Parise, Sina Ribak, Matthias Rillig, Omi-peah Ryding, Birgit Schneider, Roman Schramm, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, Katja Tielbörger, Yvonne Volkart and Gabriela Aquije Zegarra, interviews with Michael Marder, Estelle Zhong Mengual, Consuelo De Moraes and Jeremy Narby as well as poetry and literature by Gaston Bachelard, Thomas Bilda, Emily Dickinson, Louise Glück, Juliana Kalnay, Kurd Laßwitz, Mary Oliver, Eva Seck, Miriam Tag, Jan Wagner and Zara Zerbe.

Unter Pflanzen, ed. by Kathrin Meyer and Yvonne Volkart, Bad Homburg: Museum Sinclair-Haus, 2025
ISBN 978-3-945674-15-4, 160 pages, approx. 75 illustrations.

The Magazine is in German, but the texts of the core team and the partners are graspable as PdFs in the category Publications.

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Glossary

Borrachero Andaki

From the Solanaceae family, the Borrachero Adaki (or Culebra) is a variety of the Brugmansia plant form the high Andes and humid rainforest of Colombia, thought to be a cultigen because its presence is most often related to human settlements where the plant has been cultivated. In 1942, Richard Evan Schultes encountered this rare variety of the Burgmansia plant. Its leaves narrower, resembling a knife and “the corolla almost divided into separate petals united only towards their bases.”

He named this variety Methysticodendron Amesianum [the Mutant Sleep Tree], or also known as Borrachero Culebra.

Richard Evans Schultes, “A NEW NARCOTIC GENUS FROM THE AMAZON SLOPE OF THE COLOMBIAN ANDES.” Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 17, no. 1 (1955): 1–11. See term

Buen vivir

Good Living is an old-new paradigm based on the indigenous concept of Sumac Kawsay. It is a concept in collective construction in Latin America that seeks alternatives to the Western idea of development, linking indigenous traditions and worldviews with critical ideas within Western modernity. Buen vivir proposes to abandon the idea of development as unlimited economic growth and to substitute it for a supportive and sustainable economy, displacing the centrality of humans, recognizing the centrality and value of nonhumans, and the rights of Nature.

Mónica Chuji, Grimaldo Rengifo, and Eduardo Gudynas, “Buen Vivir,” in “Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary”, eds. A. Kothari, A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria & A. Acosta, (Tulika & Authors Upfront, New Delhi, 2019), 112. See term

Plasticity

Plasticity is an individual plant response to the environmental change as it is called in ecology and evolution studies. According to the view of natural scientists (such as Trewavas), the “intelligent behavior” by plants shows rather during their individual life time scale, and that this process is not an evolution. See term

Resistant weeds

Term given by industrial agriculture to spontaneous vegetation resistant to agrochemicals used in transgenic monocultures. See term

Senti-pensar

Eduardo Galeano once said that our society often separates our soul from the body and mind from heart. To avoid this, Galeano proposed the concept of "senti-pensando" which means feeling-thinking. He learned this wisdom from Colombian fishermen who created the word "sentipensante" to describe language that speaks the truth.

Eduardo Galeano, "The book of embraces,” Trans. Cedric Belfrage, ed. W.W. Norton, (New York, 1991), 221. See term

Weeds

Over 50 years ago, biologist Edwin R. Spencer stated that “any plant is a weed if it insists on growing where the farmer wants another plant to grow. It is a plant that is out of place, according to one person's judgment, but according to the good judgment of nature it is perfectly in its place.”

Edwin Rollin Spencer, in “Malezas comestibles del Cono Sur y otras partes del planeta," E. H. Rapaport, A. Marzocca, S. B. Drausal, (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Bariloche, 2009), 3. See term

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