Henrikus Joko Yulianto
In nature, plants coexist with sentient and insentient beings and things. Green plants nourish all living creatures while they also grow and evolve in their own way. Since prehistoric times, human and nonhuman animals have always needed plants as a source of food and as a habitat for living and surviving under the pressure of natural selection. Plants consist of multiple species that proliferate according to particular geographic locations and seasonal ecologies. For instance, apples, pears, and grapes are fruits from plants that only grow in climates that have four seasons, such as in European countries and the United States. Meanwhile, other kinds of fruit like watermelon, banana, papaya, and longan usually grow in tropical regions like Southeast Asia that only have dry and rainy seasons. This means that there is an interconnectedness between plants and the particular soils or lands from which they grow. In fact, this interconnectedness is the essence of what Timothy Morton calls ‘the mesh’, which relates all life forms, including plants and humans. From an ecological point of view, plants are living organisms with inherent value. Their existence has its own value and is not simply fulfilling human and non-human animals’ physiological needs. Plants also have ‘consciousness’, as their mind enables them to grow in particular ways and to create a cycle of life in the ecosystem that nurtures the biosphere. If plants have minds, it is also because of their natural capacity to produce vegetal elements in their physical bodies through natural evolution, including trunks, branches, leaves, f lowers, and fruits that provide life for the plants themselves but also nourish human and nonhuman creatures. © 2025 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
State University of Semarang, Indonesia
