The grasping side of plants

Evidence suggests that human and non-human animals program their grasping movements depending on object properties. To date, whether plants share with animals a similar perception for action system is still debated. Here we investigate this issue in climbing plants by means of kinematics. In Experiment 1 pea plants grasped a support differing in size. In Experiment 2 the supports were lifted to the ground so that their size was inaccessible by the roots. Results for Experiment 1 indicate that plants were capable to scale kinematics according to stimulus size. For Experiment 2, when the stimulus was lifted to the ground, they were not able to do so, therefore outlining a role of the root system for the coding of support size. These findings will be discussed in the light of the root-brain hypothesis proposed by Charles Darwin and available theories put forward to explain perception-to-action in aneural organisms.