We know dogs can smell.....Can you believe plants can also smell?

Scientists say "sure" it does.  This happens during fruit ripening. You would have heard that if you keep a ripe mango in the same bag with other unripe mangoes they will  ripen faster.  This happens because the ripe one releases a ripening pheromone into the air, and the green fruit smells it and then starts ripening itself.

 

 
When one fruit starts to ripen, it releases a hormone  called ethylene, which is sensed by neighboring fruits, until the entire tree and groves ripen more or less at the same time.


Another plant that uses smell to find its food is  Dodder (cuscuta ), the parasitic plant . Dodder can’t do photosynthesis, and so has to live off of other plants. The way it finds its host plant is by smelling. A dodder can detect minute amounts of chemicals released in the air by neighboring plants, and will actually pick the one that it finds tastiest! After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps itself around it and produces haustoria that insert themselves into the vascular system of the plant it has attached to absorb the nutrients.

 


It seems  in one of the  experiments scientists showed that dodder, Cuscota pentagona prefers tomato to wheat because it prefers the smell.
There is enough research to back up the theory that plants can smell,communicate, feel, hear and remember. We will get to hear about them pretty soon.

For more information, check this out
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz/
https://student.societyforscience.org/article/plants