Erasmus Darwin

“ Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionæa, and of drosera, and the stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium; by the medium of which their muscles are excited into action. Lastly, in many flowers the anthers, when mature, approach the stigma, in others the female organ approaches to the male. ”

“ And, lastly, that the anthers and stigmas are real animals, attached indeed to their parent tree like polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous motion; that they are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with powers of reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths and butterflies, which plunder their nectaries. ”

“ To these must be added the indubitable evidence of their passion of love, and I think we may truly conclude, that they are furnished with a common sensorium belonging to each bud and that they must occasionally repeat those perceptions either in their dreams or waking hours, and consequently possess ideas of so many of the properties of the external world, and of their own existence. ”

“ For this cannot be ascribed to irritation, because cold means a defect of the stimulus of heat; but as the want of accustomed stimuli produces pain, as in coldness, hunger, and thirst of animals, these motions of vegetables in closing up their flowers must be ascribed to the disgreeable sensation, and not to the irritation of cold. Others close up their leaves during darkness, which, like the former, cannot be owing to irritation, as the irritating material is withdrawn. ”

“ The various secretions of vegetables, as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop-plant into a bitter juice ”

“ While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics of animals.
2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior or less perfect animals; a tree is a congeries of many living buds, and in this respect resembles the branches of coralline, which are a congeries of a multitude of animals. Each of these buds of a tree has its proper leaves or petals for lungs, produces its viviparous or its oviparous offspring in buds or seeds ”

“ In our country the shrubs, that are brought a degree or two from the north, are observed to flourish better than those, which come from the south. The Siberian barley and cabbage are said to grow larger in this climate than the similar more southern vegetables. ”