The language of plants [electronic resource] : science, philosophy, literature / Edited by Monica Gagliano; John C. Ryan & Patrícia Vieira.

Cover Half Title Title Copyright CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Part I. Science 1. The Language of Plant Communication (and How It Compares to Animal Communication) 2. Speaking in Chemical Tongues: Decoding the Language of Plant Volatiles 3. Unraveling the "Radiometric Signals" from Green Leaves 4. Breaking the Silence: Green Mudras and the Faculty of Language in Plants Part II. Philosophy 5. To Hear Plants Speak 6. What the Vegetal World Says to Us 7. The Intelligence of Plants and the Problem of Language: A Wittgensteinian Approach 8. A Tree by Any Other Name: Language Use and Linguistic Responsibility 9. What Vegetables Are Saying about Themselves Part III. Literature 10. The Language of Flowers in Popular Culture and Botany 11. Phytographia: Literature as Plant Writing 12. Insinuations: Thinking Plant Politics with The Day of the Triffids 13. What the Plant Says: Plant Narrators and the Ecosocial Imaginary 14. In the Key of Green? The Silent Voices of Plants in Poetry ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CONTRIBUTORS INDEX A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z.

The Language of Plants brings together groundbreaking essays from across the disciplines to foster a dialogue between the biological sciences and the humanities and to reconsider our relation to the vegetal world in new ethical and political terms. Viewing plants as sophisticated information-processing organisms with complex communication strategies (they can sense and respond to environmental cues and play an active role in their own survival and reproduction through chemical languages) radically transforms our notion of plants as unresponsive beings, ready to be instrumentally appropriated. By providing multifaceted understandings of plants, informed by the latest developments in evolutionary ecology, the philosophy of biology, and ecocritical theory, The Language of Plants promotes the freedom of imagination necessary for a new ecological awareness and more sustainable interactions with diverse life forms.