The Power of Movement in Plants: Vegetal Dimensions in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

This chapter chronicles Charles Darwin’s research on plants, with partic-1 ular attention to his 1880 The Power of Movement in Plants, co-authored with his2 son Francis. Darwin’s interest in plants was consistent throughout his life, and his3 research brought new knowledge to botany, provided grounds to reassert the impor-4 tance of the plant kingdom in connection with the animal kingdom, and gave evidence5 for many fundamental elements of his theory of evolution. This view allows to high-6 light Darwin’s significant contribution to the debate and the research on the nature7 of plants, by proving that they possess sensibility, movement and a complex ability8 of interaction with the environment through their root tips. Darwin’s work on plants,9 however, was largely overlooked or underestimated by many botanists of his time,10 who never recognized him as a scientist in their field and wrongly assumed that his11 theory of evolution would apply only to the animal kingdom. Darwin’s research on12 plants was, instead, precisely proof that evolution was universal and constitutive of13 all living beings that co-evolve and coexist in the same ecosystems; and some of14 his most courageous theses on the vegetal-that plants possess sensibility, movement,15 and a complex ability to interact with their environments through their root tips—are16 now widely acknowledged among the bases of contemporary plant neurobiology.