We're learning everyday that the complexity of plants is spectacular and it only deepens our appreciation for them and rightly so. But it's easy to get lost in language and think appreciating plants necessitates attributing consciousness to them, or attributing an open-ended possibility, which even in it's more measured form still dramatically overshoots what can responsibly be said about their capabilities.

Biomimicry is amazing, canopy patterns are amazing, optimizations to take advantage of water are amazing, signal exchanging in the face of disease or fire are amazing, and should be celebrated, and surely there is more we will yet learn. But nothing we have yet learned points to anything like consciousness, either in our form or in some possible alternative form.

Kind of similarly, you don't need to swallow high energy drinks to get the performance benefits.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/apr/15/high-energy-...