In the case of seeds, the presence of consciousness and mental operations are manifested. Not only in the process of sprouting, but also in other processes, does the seed show signs of life and mind. Certain seeds are carried to their future abode by means of running streams along which they work their way to congenial soil by means of tiny projecting filaments which they move as legs, and thus propel themselves to shore. A botanist has said regarding a certain species of these "swimming seeds:" "So curiously lifelike are their movements that it is almost impossible to believe that these tiny objects, make good progress through the water, are really seeds and not insects." Certain plants prey upon other plants, twining bands around another plant or tree, which bands work their way through the outer covering of the bark and thus act as suckers through which the parasitic plant draws nourishment from the larger plant, the latter succumbing in time and being literally killed for food by the clinging plant. In South America there are varieties of these climbers which will mount to the top of a tall tree in this way, and after killing their support they will wave long tendrils in the breeze until they fasten hold of another tree which in turn is depleted of its vitality and nourishment, and so on until the parasite is surrounded by a large circle of ruined victims. Other parasites content themselves with boring into a tree trunk and then absorbing enough of the sap of the latter to enable them to live without other work on their own part. In some species, the habit of parasitism is known to have been acquired during the history of the plant, just as some animals (and human beings) have acquired similar habits.

The Plane of Plant Mind, in its seven sub-divisions, comprises the states or conditions of the entities comprising the kingdoms of the Plant World,...

Behold and consider a tree: On the outside it has a hard, gross rind or bark, which is dead, benumbed, and without vegetation—yet not quite dead, but...

Now, on the man who proposes the question denying that plants are animals, we shall show that he affirms what contradicts himself. For, having...

When the seeds of all these plants, with those from the primeval ox, have arisen upon it, every year the bird strips that tree and mingles all the...

And then the name animal was reduced to definition, for the sake of perspicuity. But having discovered that it is distinguished from what is not an an...

The concept that all life originates from seeds caused grain and various plants to be accepted as emblematic of the human spermatozoon, and the tree...

And of things without life, plants, they say, are moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them that plants are without life. ...

Then you taste the bitter quality, which makes the tree moveable or stirring, so that it springeth and grows green and flourisheth, and so getteth...

The tree of many seeds has grown amid the wide-formed ocean, and in its seed are all plants; some say it is the proper-curing, some the...

Certain plants, minerals, and animals have been sacred among all the nations of the earth because of their peculiar sensitiveness to the astral...

Above and below spread its branches, nourished by the gunas. Sense-objects are its buds; and its clustering roots spread downward in the world of...

Ten thousand of them grew forth of one special description, for keeping away the ten thousand species of disease which the evil spirit produced for...

For this book is the first sprouting or vegetation of this twig, which springeth or grows green in its mother, and is as a child that is learning to w...

In like manner even as the animals, with grain of fifty and five species and twelve species of medicinal plants, have arisen from the primeval ox,...

For in the divine pomp go forth likewise all manner of sprouting and vegetation of trees, plants and all manner of fruit; and every one bears its own ...

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

Let him, then, say what he wants to learn. Is it whether what is in the womb grows and is nourished, or is it whether it possesses any sensation or...

In the meanwhile the heat from without always drieth the sweet water in the stalk, and the stalk is always smaller at the top; the higher it grows...

On the whole earth plants grew up like hair upon the heads of men.