Can plants feel pain? Even if we don't know is it theoretically possible?

Question

Personally, I have come to the unfortunate opinion that at least some plants probably can feel some sort of pain. Plants have some sort of senosry ability,we know this because they will grow in the direction of sunlight, some plants will bend to follow sunlight as a daily routine. What do you think? Any sort of sources to back up your belief?

Answer 1

They used to say Mandrake root screamed when picked. That a plant has a reaction to stimulus doesn't neccesarily constitute "feelings", since feelings are an interpretation of stimulus. As in the case of varying levels of pain threshold.

Each root apex harbours a unit of nervous system of plants. The number of root apices in the plant body is high and all brain-units are interconnected via vascular strands (plant nerves) with their polarly-transported auxin (plant neurotransmitter), to form a serial (parallel) nervous system of plants. The computational and informational capacity of this nervous system based on interconnected parallel units is predicted to be higher than that of the diffuse nervous system of lower animals, or the central nervous system of higher animals/humans.

Also:

Members of PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants) should be happy with this week's episode of Mythbusters. They hooked up a machine to a plant then tortured the plant. The machine showed the plant reacting. Even just thinkng of torturing the plant caused a reaction. The episode was based on Cleve Backster work.

In the study of paranormal phenomenon Plant perception, or biocommunication in plant cells, has come to mean a belief that plants feel emotions such as fear and affection. Believers hold that plants have the ability to communicate with humans and other forms of life in a recognizable manner. While plants can communicate through chemical signals, and certainly have complex responses to stimuli, the belief that they possess advanced cognitive abilities receives little support except in the parapsychology studies community and among believers in the Gaia hypothesis.

Published in 1973, The Secret Life of Plants was written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It is described as "A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man."

Essentially, the subject of the book is the idea that plants may be sentient, despite their lack of a nervous system. This sentience is observed primarily through changes in the plant's conductivity, as through a polygraph, as pioneered by Cleve Backster. The book also contains a summary of Goethe's theory of plant metamorphosis.

Answer 2

Who cares?

They make good veggie stews.