Do plants have life

If you shot out "Yes" my next question would be what concrete evidence you have from practical life. It's easy to find the evidence, but unless you experience the truth, you wouldn't appreciate it as much. We have read about hosts of scientific evidences that proves that plants do have life. Most of them are based on presence of activity or behavior that one would associate with a living being, e.g. Reproduction, metabolism, growth etc. However, when do we say that a living being is dead? What exactly demarcates life from death? For human beings, we know that a person can be alive but brain dead. So absence or presence of activity in the brain has not been convincingly linked to the state of being dead. Stopping of heart-beat or breathing is also considered to indicate death, however, we know of instances where an artificial pump keeps the blood circulation while the heart is dis-functional. Oxygen can be pumpted in too, to keep let the tissues perform their normal function. So what defines death. While the atheists may not agree, I see death as the separation of the body from an entity that most call the "soul". I don't intend to debate the existence of such and entity here, though, I need to say, call it what you wish, there is something that defines death.

Now, coming to my original discussion on plants and their life, it is apparent that all scientific evidence leans on proving that elementary functionality of all living beings are displayed by plants as well. Based on my arguments in the first paragh, am not convinced that the presence of biological activity is enough to prove that plants have a life. Thus, I have never been a believer of this theory.

Sometimes we do not learn by understanding and applying what others say, reading articles or books, watching TV or any other avenues where information is obtained from a world outside of our being. We learn by our own experiences. I have a few plants in my flat's balcony which my mother nurtured when she was staying with me for sometime. My mom is now in Hyderabad and I have taken over from here in caring for the plants. I must admit that I do not have even 5% of warmth that my mother had. I still want the plants to be green and I want them to grow and bloom. I do happen to visit my mom's place once or twice a month, during which time these plants get no water. Some of these visits are for more than 4-5 days. When I return home, I find the plants thirsty in their looks, wanting for love and attention.

A few of these have great resilience to adverse weather and lack of nourishment, while others turn frail with just a couple of days of denying their life-giving share of water. I have seen some plants die and others turn pale and dry. Now, when defining a human being's death was so obtuse, how could I be convinced that a plant is actually dead. Frankly, I do not have a provable theory on this, however, if a plant ceases to grow or to get new leaves, or to even sustain the existing ones, that is evidence enough to conclude that the plant is dead.

Initially I was really not convinced that these plant would actually die. I continued watering them hoping that they would eventually revive by sucking up their life from the soil beneath. That never happened in most cases. I was convinced that plants do have a life. And if they can live, reproduce, grow and die, then so can they feel love, happiness, sorrow and other emotions. I must thus learn to communicate to them, rather then emptying a mug of water into their roots every morning in a detached manner. That's a lesson I learnt from practical experience and hope to be able to give more attention to these creatures.