A friend of ours is a vegetarian.  She often gets onto my husband for eating meat saying things like, “Don’t you feel bad that a cow had to die”?
He would laugh and respond, “Don’t you think that carrot is screaming when it is yanked from the ground”?  Well, there may be some truth to that response after all.

 People use aspirin all of the time.  It is one of the most popular over the counter, multi-use tablets available.  However, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research discovered that weak, unhealthy and stressed plants produce a chemical similar to aspirin; that can actually be detected in the air above the plants.  Scientists are speculating the chemical may be a sort of immune response that helps to protect the plants.  Humans are advised to take an aspirin for a fever, but plants have the ability to produce their own.
 
Laboratory tests were extended to testing in a walnut grove in California.  Previous studies indicated that plants produce chemicals, when they are being eaten by an animal, detectable by other plants.  Instruments placed 100 feet above the ground were able to measure the methyl salicylate from the plants when they were under stressful conditions such as droughts or unseasonably cool temperatures followed by large daytime temperature increases according to an article by Randolph Schmid of the Associated Press.
 
The findings went on to state that in addition to having an immune like function, the chemical may be a means for plants to communicate to neighboring plants, warning them of the threat.
 
“These findings show tangible proof that plant-to-plant communication occurs on the ecosystem level,” says NCAR scientist Alex Guenther, a co-author of the study.  “It appears that plants have the ability to communicate through the atmosphere.”
 
Other studies have shown that plants may be communicating with insects, too.  A study in Japan found that when plants were being eaten by a certain mite, the plants produced a chemical signaling a predator to the mite to come and eat the mites.  It also seems they know the difference between wide spread danger and isolated danger.  Plants that were exposed to a widespread danger, such as insects, sent off a chemical that caused the neighboring plants to change the way they taste, making them less desirable to the invading insects.  When a plant was crushed, the surrounding plants had no reactions to the chemicals released by the injured plant.
 
What does all of this mean?  I really don’t know, but I will think twice before I yank another carrot from its comforting soil in my garden.

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