In the recently released book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, Carl Safina reports on the intricate social interactions, family bonds and distinct personalities observed in mammals such as elephants, orcas, primates, dogs and wolves. Safina delves into the latest scientific research that reveals layers of complex thought and behavior throughout the animal kingdom

Brilliant Green: the Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence, makes a case not only for plant sentience, but also plant rights. Interesting, though science fiction authors have been doing thought experiments about this for a long time, e.g. in Ursula LeGuin’s novel “The Word for World is Forest” and in my own “The Uplift War.” Jack Chalker’s “Midnight at the Well of Souls” portrayed sentient plants, as did Lord of the Rings.

A couple more pointers to possible plant sentience:

Roots and fungi combine to form what is called a mycorrhiza: itself a growing-together of the Greek words for fungus (mykós) and root (riza). In this way, individual plants are joined to one another by an underground hyphal network: a dazzlingly complex and collaborative structure that has become known as the Wood Wide Web. This symbiosis is thought to be 450 ma old. The fungi help plants grow by assisting in the delivery of water, phosphorus, and nitrogen. In exchange plants send the fungus food. The network enables plants to communicate with each other. Fungus will even help plants defend themselves.

This one beech tree was cut 500 years ago by a charcoal maker, but the stump is still alive — we found green chlorophyll under the thick bark. The tree has no leaves to create sugars, so the only explanation is that it has been supported by neighboring trees for 500 years.