A Plant That Can Smell

BlueCup writes "The question of how a dodder finds a host plant has puzzled researchers. Many thought it simply grew in a random direction, with discovery of a plant to attack being a chance encounter. But the researchers led by Consuelo M. De Moraes found that if they placed tomato plants near a germinating dodder, the parasite headed for the tomato 80 percent of the time. And when they put scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73 percent of the dodder seedlings headed that way. Turns out, it sniffs out it's prey."

Not really

[DrKyle]

Smell is not just chemoattraction. Plants also grow in the direction of sunlight, does that mean they can see? They grow away from gravity, does that mean they can feel?

Is that surprising?

[Reality Master 201]

Smell isn't anything more than detecting fairly dilute chemicals
in the air. The fact that some species of plant have evolved to
perform very specific kinds of chemical detection to ensure their
survival doesn't seem surprising to me. Plants grow towards the
light - why not towards other things that are essential for their
survival.

I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

There must be something wrong with these people. It doesn't seem to matter how often they see "its" and "it's" used correctly, they don't learn. I would find it difficult to be so dense; but then again, I'm not stupid.

Yawn

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Plants react to stimuli - that's well-known. They grow in the direction of light, the fruits ripen when there is ethylene in the air. Hell - you even have insect-trapping plants..

So, if there are unique chemicals that the prey species give off, there is no surprise the doddler can detect them and react to them. Cool that scientists did the study and found this example, though :)