Activities

Norbert Peeters, April 2025 – When plants began to move: a paradigm shift in plant science. Philosophically speaking plant movement presents us with an interesting example of a paradigm shift in the plant sciences. In the two millennia long tradition of hierarchical ordering of nature, plants were deemed to be destitute of movement and senses. These characteristics were held to be animal. Plants did not lead an animated life. However, some anomalies occurred. Plants that were capable of autonomous movement or in reaction to a stimulus. To preserve the prevailing paradigm these plants were labeled zoophytes, animal-plants, a strange no-man’s-land between the plant and animal kingdom. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century and the work of Gottlieb Haberlandt, Wilhelm Pfeffer and Charles Darwin that plants lead restless life. Moving or sensitive plants are no anomalies, movement abounds in the plant kingdom. Norbert shared his researcher with PhDs and postdocs from the GreenTE consortium and from the Biochemistry Department at WUR. After his presentation we had a very interesting and lively session of Q&A!