Plant emotion revisited: toward a new conceptual framework

Traditional paradigms in basic emotion research, largely grounded in animal and human psychology, are problematic when extended to plants due to fundamental biological and neurophysiological differences. This paper criticizes the anthropocentric tendency to equate plant responses with human emotional states, emphasizing that plants, lacking a central nervous system and brain, cannot experience feelings in the human sense. Instead, we propose a novel conceptual framework: emotus plantarum. This term defines a plant-specific signaling system that fulfills a role functionally analogous to emotions in animals—coordinating adaptive responses to environmental stimuli. Unlike cognitive models that presuppose centralized information processing, emotus plantarum reframes abilities such as learning, memory, anticipation, and decision-making as emergent, decentralized properties of plant physiology that serve emotion system functions. These processes modulate plant behavior, such as tropisms, nastic movements, and chemical signaling enabling flexible, context-dependent reactions that enhance survival and fitness. This framework shift allows for a more biologically appropriate interpretation of plant behavior, bypassing the need to force-fit plant responses into anthropomorphic categories. By repositioning these attributes within an emotion system framework unique to plants, the concept of emotus plantarum offers a more nuanced approach to understanding plant-environment interactions. Ultimately, this perspective promotes a deeper integration of plant-specific biology into the study of adaptive behavior, opening new avenues for research in plant signaling, communication, and responsiveness.