Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence, by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence, London, The Bridge Street Press, 2022, 304 pp., £22 (hbk), ISBN: 978-0-34912-845-0.

According to Paco Calvo, professor of philosophy of science, plants are intelligent or rather sentient beings making choices just as animals (even the most primitive and unicellular).Plants of the genus Lavatera (Cornish mallow) turn after the sun, and they can hold information about what direction the sun will appear from for several days, even in the absence of sunlight.Mimosas seem to have longterm memory, their defensive folding up of the leaves being a variable habituation that could last for up to 28 days.Cognitive behaviour is by definition adaptive, anticipatory, goal-directed and flexible, and Calvo finds it hard to deny these capabilities in plants.