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06/05/2009: "Plants 'can recognise themselves' and favor their own kind"
Experiments show that a sagebrush plant can recognise a genetically identical cutting growing nearby.
What's more, the two clones communicate and cooperate with one another, to avoid being eaten by herbivores.
The findings, published in Ecology Letters, raise the tantalising possibility that plants, just like animals, often prefer to help their relatives over unrelated individuals.
The ability to distinguish self from non-self is a vital one in nature.
[ Well of course competition exists in all life forms to help their own kind and beat the competition. It has long been observable how various kinds of plants kill competitos through evolving strategies to help themselves grow faster, put others in the shade or absorb more nutrients from the soil. So it is with all living things. Only crazy white people are stupid enough to put their competitors first and die for them. ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8076000/8076875.stm