The light eaters : how the unseen world of plant intelligence offers a new understanding of life on Earth / Zoë Schlanger.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"A masterpiece of science writing." -Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

"Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful." -Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

"Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!" -Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction

"A brilliant must-read. This book shook and changed me." -David George Haskell, author of Sounds Wild and Broken, The Songs of Trees, and The Forest Unseen

Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us.

It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for--if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants--and our own place--in the natural world.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Schlanger, a staff writer at the Atlantic, debuts with an astounding exploration of the remarkable abilities of plants and fungi. Highlighting recent research suggesting many plants are "composites of interpenetrating forms of life," Schlanger details Peruvian ecologist Ernesto Gianoli's theory that the Chilean boquila vine, which changes the appearance of its leaves to mimic nearby plants, receives shape-shifting direction from microorganisms "hijacking and redirecting" the vine's genes. Other plants appear capable of communication, Schlanger contends, explaining that the Sitka willow can "alter the contents of its leaves to be less nutritious" when threatened by hungry caterpillars and transmit airborne chemical signals prompting other trees to take similar defensive action before they're attacked. Investigating whether plants can be said to have personalities, Schlanger describes ecologist Richard Karban's ongoing research into whether differences in how strongly individual sagebrush plants respond to internal and external distress signals are consistent over time ("Natural-born scaredy-cats" might respond "wildly at the slightest disturbance"). There are mind-bending revelations on every page, and Schlanger combines robust intellectual curiosity with delicate lyricism ("Pearlescent wetness clings to everything like spider silk," she writes of the Hawaiian cliffs where a botanist rappels to pollinate an endangered hibiscus). Science writing doesn't get better than this. (May)

Booklist Review

Seeking an antidote to dire news, environmental reporter Schlanger devoted herself to tracking the surge in "new epiphanies in plant science." Plants, Schlanger reminds us, dominate life on earth and make our lives possible, yet we often dismiss their significance, viewing them as backdrop, passive and predictable. Schlanger disabuses us of this enormous misperception as she chronicles, with growing wonder, her sojourns with innovative botanists in labs and in the field in Hawaii, Chile, Connecticut, Germany, and beyond. Grounded in the history of botany, she lucidly and vividly explains startling findings about plant communication, memory, decision-making, motion, sense (touch, hearing, vision), defenses, kin recognition, altruism, and many other forms of green intelligence. Each portrait of a plant, from sagebrush to arabidopsis to the shape-shifting boquila vine, and each interaction between plants and pollinators, reveals more evidence supporting the arguments that plants are complex and active "social beings" who care for their families and thrive in collaborative communities. Just as books by Peter Wohlleben and Suzanne Simard have deepened our understanding of trees, the discoveries Schlanger shares in this involving, vibrant, and affecting dispatch from the vanguard of plant research profoundly expands our appreciation for plants, their essential role in the great web of life, and how recognition of plant intelligence can help us reverse environmental decimation.

Kirkus Book Review

Ambitious attempts to decode the manifest mysteries of plants. Schlanger, a staff reporter at the Atlantic, has followed multiple veins of study on plant life to reveal remarkable discoveries and some potentially revolutionary conjectures. Her passion for the realm of plants--and what their lives tell us about our own--is consistent throughout this wondrous text. This is that rare book that fascinates, challenges widely held assumptions, and enlightens in like measure. The author doubtless considers the narrative an overview of current plant science (and its history) for general readers, notwithstanding the years invested in her own preparatory research, but it is hard to imagine a more thorough introduction or a writer more dedicated to her subject and provocative in the questions she asks. Schlanger chronicles her edifying interactions with dozens of scientists, describing numerous experiments. She also weighs the skepticism of botanists and biologists who think the study of intelligence in plants is folly. Many scientists, she notes, still recoil from the damage done to legitimate research by the largely spurious but immensely popular 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants, "a mix of real science, flimsy experiments, and unscientific projection." However, this reticence pales when held against new studies of the ways in which plants communicate, defend themselves, and remember, as well as the considerations of how biological systems can replicate across the spectrum of species. What is indisputable is that plants made animal life possible in the most fundamental way, transitioning the world's atmosphere from a toxic shroud of carbon dioxide to an oasis of oxygen. In this lovely book, the plant universe finds a human champion appreciative of its earthly role, concerned for its welfare, and amazed at its capacities. A delightful work of popular science. You may never look at your houseplants or garden in quite the same way again. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.