Getting to know our green neighbors

Getting to know our green neighbors

Cover of "The Light Eaters" by Zoe Schlanger.

Provided

This installment of The Ungardener was to be about soil health but I will save that topic as I am compelled to tell you about a book I finished exactly three minutes before writing this sentence. It is called “The Light Eaters.” Written by Zoe Schlanger, a journalist by background, the book relays both the cutting edge of plant science and the outdated norms that surround this science. I promise that, in reading this book, you will be fascinated by what scientists are discovering about plants which extends far beyond the notions of plant communication and commerce — the wood wide web — that soaked into our consciousnesses several years ago. You might even find, as I did, some evidence for the empathetic, heart-expanding sentiment one feels in nature.

A staff writer for the Atlantic who left her full-time job to write this book, Schlanger has travelled around the world to bring us stories from scientists and researchers that evidence sophisticated plant behavior. These findings suggest a kind of plant ‘agency’ and perhaps even a consciousness; controversial notions that some in the scientific community have not been willing or able to distill into the prevailing human-centric conceptions of intelligence.

Plants exhibit behaviors that appear as variations of our own: they communicate, but using chemicals that are expelled through the air or soil. They have perceptual abilities that can be correlated, with varying degrees, to our sound, feeling and sight, in some cases using the same or similar mechanisms as we do. The human body uses electrical currents, powered by electrolytes, to enable just about every bodily action — touch, movement, thought etc. Plants use this method as well.

We learn about a slug that from birth is programmed to find and eat a specific plankton. When it does, its color changes from its original brown to green and the slug is then able to photosynthesize, after which it never has to eat food for the rest of its life (is it now a plant or still an animal?) A vine whose leaves change shape to resemble those of the plant or plants it climbs on (can it ‘see’ and, if not, how does it know what to transform into?)

In researching and relaying these and other science-backed revelations, Schlanger calls into question the line drawn between the categories of animal and plant. We know that we exist in this world only because of plants, they create the air we breathe, they are the nutrients we eat. We are learning that our bodies contain a microbiome made up of bacteria, fungi and viruses that control much of our functioning. Yet humanity seeks to control plants in ways that are often at cross purposes to our very existence.

While retaining a journalistic dispassion, she makes the case for science to surmount the hurdle that language poses in the pursuit of expressing new findings and posits a worldview that does not put humans at the center. Currently, the institutions surrounding science are designed to be circumspect in their effort to ensure that findings are not just correct but indelibly reliable; a base to be built on by other scientists. Scientists and researchers whose discoveries are at odds with prevailing findings are at risk of losing credibility, funding and even their careers, often to find themselves (if they are still alive) proven correct decades later. Which calls into question the reliability of science’s erstwhile indelibility and makes a case for systemic changes to the institutions that power the scientific community.


“Biological life is a spiraling diffusion of possibilities, fractal in its profusion.”

Schlanger’s observations and hypotheses can themselves appear as fractals of her revelatory reporting of plant discoveries. Like the shape-shifting entities she writes about she finds that she too has changed.

Perhaps you can relate. Plants can change us, and not just when we eat them. Looking at them, from both far and from close, they provoke awe and wonder. Time spent in the woods begets a sense of oneness and interconnectedness and has been proven to improve our well-being. Schlanger’s book asks us to consider working with plants, to learn more about them and be open to the lessons they may have for us. After all, plants were here well before humans and have had more time to evolve. They may well be here after we are not. Who’s to say they aren’t really the ones running the show?


Dee Salomon “ungardens” in Litchfield County.

Latest News

Amenia’s Elk Ravine Farm funds conservation through unique tours

Jim Archer of Elk Ravine Farm takes a seat on Billy the water buffalo on Wednesday, Sept. 10.

Nathan Miller

AMENIA — Jim Archer doesn’t look like a typical “influencer.” He doesn’t have a podcast and he doesn’t take jet-setting trips to Bali for advertising shoots.

But he has amassed a following of more than 100,000 people across his Instagram and TikTok accounts. Archer shows off his unique collection of farm animals and produces educational content about ecology and the environment all from Elk Ravine Farm, his property on Smithfield Valley Road in Amenia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Sharon Dennis Rosen

SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.

Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.

Keep ReadingShow less
‘Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between’ at the Moviehouse

Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”

Still from "The King of In between"

There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”

“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Haystack Book Festival: writers in conversation

The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.

Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival

Keep ReadingShow less