"While humans and many other animals, for example, have a specific organ, the brain, which houses its neuronal tree, plants use the soil as the stratum for the neuronal net; they have no need for a specific organ to house their neuronal system. The numerous root apices act as one whole, synchronized, self-organized system, much as the neurons in our brains do. Our brain matter is, in fact, merely the soil that contains the neuronal net we use to process and store information. Plants use the soil itself to house the neuronal net. This allows the root system to continue to expand out-ward, adding new neural extensions for as long as the plant grows.
In addition, the leaf canopy also acts as a synchronized, self-organized perceptual organ which is highly attuned to electromagnetic fields. It can be viewed , in fact, as a crucial subcortical portion of the plant brain. As Baluska et al. comment, the root apices harbor brain-like units of the nervous system of the plants. The number of root apices in the plant body is high, and all 'brain units' are interconnected via vascular strands (plant neurons) which their polarly -transported auxin (plant neurotransmitter), to form a serial (parallel) neuronal system of plants. From observation of the plant body of maize, it is obvious that the number of root apices is extremely high....This feature makes the 'serialplant brain' extremely robust and the amount of processed information must be immense.
Plant biologist Peter Barlow adds that the tips of the roots "form a multiheaded advancing front. The complete set of tips endows the plant with a collective brain, diffused over a large area, gathering, as the root system grows and developes, information" crucial to the plant's survival. And as he continues, One attribute of the brain as the term is commonly understood, is that it is an organ with a definite structure and location, which gathers or collects information, which was originally in the form of vibrations (heat, light, sound, chemical, mechanical....) in the ambient environment and somehow transforms them into an output or response. By this definition, plants do have brains just as we do, but given their capacity to live for millennia (in the case of some aspen root systems, over 100,000 years) their neuronal networks can in many instances, far exceed our own. Old growth aspen root systems can spread through as much as a hundred acres of soil creating a neural network substantially larger than Einstein's or any other human beings. Plants, it must be realized, possess a spectrum of neural networks, just as mammals do. Some plants possess extremely large neural networks, others smaller. In other words, "brain" size occurs across a considerable range, just as it does with mammals. Nevertheless, all plants are intelligent ( just as are all mammals). They are all self-aware. They all engage in highly interactive social transactions with their communities."
Stephen Harrod Buhner Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm
OK. All this. a lot. Today i put the coyote bush material that i had steeped on the stove into the copper dye pot. It's covered to hope against condensation. Is in SUN. A piece of cloth. Tomorrow, if it can happen, i will put more cloths. Will continue for a Season.
i also put a tied cloth in the jar with the walnut sludge from last year's harvest. It's all foamy and gross looking, but there is no bad smell. At the end of the day i took it out and there were excellent marks. It continues. Walnut. Jenny's man is gathering walnuts from their yard for me. New and this year.
