Plants can remember past events and re-mobilize this information later. Ex: Tobacco plans remember the color of the last ray of light seen. Willows know if their neighbors have been attacked by caterpillars. At this stage, it is a procedural memory.
Some experiments:
Jaffe experiment in 1977 on the procedural memory of the pea spin and the wrapping around the finger.
Experiments Hodick and Sievers of the University of Bonn and Volkov of the University of Oakwood on the short-term memory of the Venus flytrap. The Venus flytrap only closes its leaves when the fly has remained there for 20 seconds and has touched two of its hairs. The information is stored in the electrical charge of the leaf. Conversely, a drug injected into the plant destroys his memory.
2006 Hohn experiment at the Basel laboratory on the mouse-ear cress and the memory transmitted over several generations. An attack of pathogens or ultraviolet rays causes stress which itself generates a new combination of DNA in the plant. This new combination is transmitted to the descendants. Studies are in progress.
Lyssenko’s experience on wheat and cold weather and on mouse-ear cress. There is a memory of winter. Because it takes a minimum duration of severe cold and a minimum duration of the day and an adequate temperature to launch new growth in spring. The cold data are stored and condition the possibility of growth if the other data, temperature and day, are correctly combined. This memory is linked to the functioning of genes and epigenetic mechanisms.
Similar experience of Kovalchuk on the effects of stress with salt and heat and Jander experience of Cornell University on mouse-ear cress. Genetic, epigenetic and RNA changes seen over several generations have also improved resistance to various stresses.
Recent experience at New York University. Plants communicate via electric currents but are also equipped with proteins known in animals and humans as neuroreceptors and used for remembering and learning. Thus the Arabab is sensitive to neuroactive drugs which annihilate the action in humans of these neuroreceptors.