The Bushes Scream While my Daddy Prunes

While researching Biodynamic winemakers in Switzerland I stumbled on an intriguing paper written by a Swiss group of plant biologists and agriculturalists. It is entitled Rediscovering Plants: Rheinauer Theses on the Rights of Plants.

Warning: controversy ahead.

The Swiss constitution maintains that the dignity of all creatures should be respected. Essentially, the thesis is that plants are living beings, not automata, so inter alia, they also have dignity. While the concept of dignity is a human idea, the Swiss group imply by this word that plants are entitled to a life that is independent of Man's interest in them. To develop the argument further, plants as living beings should be respected by Man for their own sake and furthermore, Man has obligations towards plants in a way that is little different conceptually to Man's obligations to the animal kingdom and the environment. In short, plants have Rights too.

Plant and animal life date back some 400 to 500 million years and evolved from a common ancestor: single cell life forms. Many will remember school biology - the single cell organism Euglena has both plant and animal characteristics.

Research in plant science has shown that plants, like us, can sense their environment and can interact with it by changing their behaviour, in other words they are sentient and can at least react to stimuli. Meanwhile, at the cellular level, the similarities between animals and plants are far greater than once thought - for example, both plants and animals have an immune system and cells reproduce in similar ways.

Inevitably then, plants, animals and humans have a common heritage even though each are radically different today - once again, a demonstration that we are all a related and evolved part of Earth's existence, which was not created as Man's plaything. This implies that Man should adopt a moral responsibility towards all living creatures, including plants, and treat them with respect rather than as disposable objects. That responsibility has been codified by drawing up a Bill of Rights for Plants.

That plants might be entitled to a bill of rights does not automatically mean that Man should not eat them, limit their use or conduct research. This is no different to how Man should treat animals - recognising the rights of animals does not automatically (unless you are vegetarian) mean removing them from the food chain, rather it implies treating them with dignity and respect. Moreover, our relationship with plants occurs in various ways besides using them for food or fuel - we relate to plants in artistic, spiritual, emotional and aesthetic ways, as every good flower arranger or painter knows.

The Rights of Plants is downloadable here as a pdf file. So why not read it and make up your own mind about its validity - either way, it's a thought-provoking exercise as it contains six fundamental principles:

The right to reproduce

The right to independence

The right to evolve

The right to survival as a species

The right to respectful research and development

The right not to be patented

If you believe that the world was created for Man to use as he wishes then these ideas will stretch your credulity. On the other hand, it may alter your perceptions about plants and your interactions with them. Certainly such thinking would be considered natural to anyone involved with Jainism, whose philosophy of non-violence means doing no harm to any living creature, including plants.

I think there are other very interesting consequences that fall out of such thinking. For example, there are implications for using GMO. Pesticides and fertilisers, for biodiversity and the environment and for species preservation - why else construct a massive seed ark in Norway? It certainly implies that we should work with nature rather than against it.

On a more individual level, do plants feel pain? They certainly can react to stimuli but the honest answer is that we do not know if plants are capable of sensation as we understand and experience it as they have no nervous system in the way animals do. There is no scientific proof that plants feel "pain" or otherwise and this may always remain unknowable.

A final thought -nobody can ask plants if they want these rights or would like to propose alternatives. They are Man's construct to appeal to our own moral and ethical values. Regardless, it certainly appeals to me.

"Daddy walks the lawn, the grass is getting long

The trees are looking crooked and the bushes seem wrong

He never noticed until now how untidy it seems

He frowns thinking how it looked in dreams

The pale sun flickers through the twitching trees

And the wind fills the lawn with rustling leaves

In the shed daddy sharpens up his secateur blades

And the wind picks up and the sunlight fades

The bushes scream while my daddy prunes

In the morning Daddy wears his plastic mac

Takes the cutters from his pocket and starts to prune hard back

When there's nothing left but stumps he stops to take a rest

But daddy's very angry, he still thinks it looks a mess"*

*The Very Things, 1984