Plants Can Tell Kin from Strangers

It is not only animals, which can tell siblings from strangers; it seems that plants can perform the same trick. Susan Dudley and Amanda File of McMaster University in Canada have shown that plants grown alongside unrelated neighbors are more competitive than those growing with their siblings — investing more energy into growing roots when their neighbors are not of kin. The researchers used a beach-dwelling plant, the Great Lakes sea rocket (Cakile edentula) as model plants.

Plants can sense the presence of neighboring plants through changes in water or nutrients available to them or through chemical cues in the soil, and can adjust their own growth accordingly. "That plants have a secret social life is something well known to plant ecologists," says Dudley --- though how the plants recognize siblings is still a mystery.

Readers can access the article at http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/070611-4.html.