Plant Agency
Francisco Javier Navarro Prieto
Plant agency is the capacity of plants to exhibit adaptive and flexible behavior, oriented toward goals and based on the perception and integration of multiple signals from the biotic and abiotic environment (Trewavas and Baluška, 2011; Sharov, 2022). In this entry, the term agency does not necessarily presuppose consciousness or subjective experience. It is possible to speak of biological agency—that is, context-sensitive, plastic, goal-directed action—without adopting any thesis regarding the existence of conscious states in plants. The question of plant consciousness constitutes a distinct debate and will not be addressed here.
In contrast to a merely “reactive” interpretation of plant behavior, according to which plants passively respond to environmental stimuli through the execution of predetermined mechanisms (see mechanism), numerous studies in plant physiology and ecology have highlighted the complexity of their behavioral repertoire. Plants exhibit chemical communication, kin recognition, context-dependent decision-making, learning and memory, as well as various forms of anticipatory behavior (Trewavas, 2014; Calvo and Lawrence, 2023).
Despite this, the notion of plant agency has been controversial. Some authors maintain that concepts such as “plant agency” or “plant intelligence” add no explanatory value (Robinson et al., 2020) and argue that observable plant behavior can be adequately understood as the outcome of genetic information accumulated through natural selection (Taiz et al., 2019). From this perspective, reference to agency is either superfluous or misleading.
In its stronger form, this objection adopts a gene-centered interpretation of plant behavior. According to this view: (1) the organism’s conduct is entirely reducible to interactions among molecules and gene regulatory networks implementing a “genetic program”; (2) the organismal level lacks independent causal status; and (3) the category of organism is dispensable for explaining adaptation and behavior.
Within this framework, plant agency is sometimes described as an epiphenomenon. In the technical sense, an epiphenomenon is a phenomenon that accompanies certain physical processes without possessing independent causal efficacy: it produces no effects of its own but is wholly dependent on underlying causes. Applied to plants, this would imply that observable behavior—for instance, a defensive response to herbivory—has no causal relevance at the level of the organism, since the only real causes are the molecular processes that underlie it. In such a view, the appeal to agency would be merely descriptive.
Against this reductive interpretation, defenders of plant agency argue that the integration of multiple environmental information sources and the adaptive flexibility observed in plants cannot be reduced to the execution of a rigid genetic program. Plant conduct is adaptive, plastic, and goal-directed in a biological sense (Calvo and Lawrence, 2023). As Denis Noble has put it, “life is rule-making, not rule-following” (Noble and Noble, 2023, p. 83).
In this line of thought, Mary Jane West-Eberhard (2003) has argued that genes should not be conceived as “directors” of organismal activity but as resources that stabilize and enable phenotypic changes generated within development and organism–environment interaction. The history of molecular biology offers paradigmatic examples of this conceptual shift. The discovery of so-called “jumping genes” by Barbara McClintock showed that genomes are not static structures but dynamic systems capable of reorganization (McClintock, 1950). Such findings weakened strong genetic determinism and underscored the importance of regulatory processes at the level of the organism.
Historically, the debate over plant agency forms part of a broader reassessment of the explanatory status of genetics. For much of the twentieth century, biology was marked by a reductionist tendency that granted genes a privileged causal role (Keller, 2002). However, developments in systems biology and epigenetics have highlighted the necessity of considering higher levels of organization in explaining behavior and adaptation.
Recent empirical research provides numerous examples of plant behavioral complexity. Communication through volatile organic compounds (VOCs) allows plants to alert one another to herbivore attacks (Baldwin, 2010). It has also been shown that Arabidopsis thaliana can detect vibrations produced by insect chewing and activate specific defensive responses (Appel and Cocroft, 2014). These phenomena do not amount to isolated automatic reactions but involve contextual discrimination and dynamic adjustment.
In the domain of social behavior, the roots of Impatiens pallida have been observed to modulate their competitiveness depending on whether they interact with kin or non-kin individuals, suggesting mechanisms of kin recognition (Murphy and Dudley, 2009). Likewise, studies on Fragaria vesca indicate that certain plants can associate previous nutrient locations with specific light conditions and use that experience to anticipate opportunities in novel contexts (Latzel and Münzbergová, 2018). Such findings have been interpreted by some authors as forms of learning and memory in plants (Trewavas, 2014).
The notion of plant agency does not deny the molecular basis of behavior; rather, it rejects the claim that this basis exhausts its explanation. To recognize agency is to affirm that the organismal level constitutes an irreducible explanatory instance in biology. Botany is not reducible to genetics, just as physiology is not reducible to molecular biology. The plant organism integrates signals, evaluates environmental conditions, and deploys coordinated responses that cannot be exhaustively described in terms of isolated molecular events.
In the context of the Anthropocene, the debate over plant agency acquires normative significance. The extractivist ideology that characterizes many of our economic practices tends to render invisible the biological work performed by plants—photosynthesis, carbon fixation, and the regulation of biogeochemical cycles—upon which life on Earth depends. Some authors have even proposed describing our epoch as a “Plantationocene,” underscoring the centrality of monocultures and the systematic exploitation of plant organisms (Haraway, 2015). Recognizing plants as biological agents may contribute to rethinking interspecies relations and reconsidering their place within the contemporary ecosocial crisis.
In sum, the evidence accumulated over recent decades challenges both gene-centrism and the anthropocentrism that has traditionally shaped our understanding of the plant world. Plants are not passive substrates executing genetic instructions but organisms capable of context-sensitive action and flexible adaptation. To speak of plant agency is not to anthropomorphize plants, but to acknowledge that the category of organism—rather than that of gene alone—plays a central role in biological explanation.
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