From JMG´s discussion threads, somebody called Team10Tim has spotted a *really* weird scientific paper on the web. Could this in fact be evidence for Rupert Sheldrake´s morphogenetic fields? Or perhaps plants can actually *see* their environment?
>>>Hey hey JMG. I have a fun one for you today. This won’t come as any surprise to you, but I think it is worth posting anyways.
>>>Boquila trifoliolata is a climbing vine that imitates the leaves of the plant it is climbing, mimicking the host’s leaves in a phenomenon called mimetic polymorphism. Unlike other plants B. Trifoliolata mimics more than one plant. In fact, it mimics the size, shape, color, and even spikes of whatever plant it climbs. The two working theories (because you can’t have an effect without a mechanism silly) are pheromones and gene transference.
>>>Unfortunately for these theories someone had it climb a plastic plant…and mimicry. In fact, it not only ‘sees’ and ‘copies’ it also gets better with practice, er time, in what looks like (but obviously isn’t and can’t be) perception, self awareness, and memory.
The first link below is to the paper, the second to an old blog post about the same plant, long before the recent research was published. Ironically, it refers to the mimicry as "plastic"! The third is to Wiki.
Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant
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