Plants came before moths, but there are some desert plants whose life cycle is dependent on a species of moth pollinating them. How things were in the past influences but isn’t the sole arbiter of how things are in the present or future.

Which isn’t to say that it’s strictly true, I think it serves more purpose as a thinking exercise than a scientific theory. But I don’t think it’s impossible that it’s true, either.

We don't need chickens to survive either. It doesn't mean we didn't domesticate them.

Things change tho, they can “evolve” so to say.

Plants need us animals to turn that oxygen they produce back into carbon dioxide for them.

plants came from red algae i believe, that was able to survive on land as primitive bryphytes, or thier ancestors. carbiniferous period is when they really took off. Plants encorporated both chloroplast and mitochondria endosymbionts in thier evolution.

Every seedless fruit is a testament of how humanity has deviated from its original, seed nurturing purpose.

Navel gazers?

its a clone of a clone, much like the cavendish bannana, and cultivars of watermelons. and apples too.

fun fact, there is actually a cold tolerant wild orange that grows in the wild, the trifoliate orange, but its not super edible because its extremely bitter flesh, and it has thorns, and its more resistant to disease than domesticated oranges.

That reminds me. Need to go clone some grape cultivars and do some more guerilla gardening at my buddy's house

Brb, gotta go buy some cat food.

First we had !NotKenM, now we need !NotStamets.

This is why I don't like determining an organism's value based on how "sentient" it is. I prefer to admit that I treat dogs and pigs better than carrots and fish because I empathize with them more, entirely of my own bias. I don't think I have any more or less value than a blade of grass; we're both products of happenstance just running our programming, and we won't be around long.

What other understanding of sentience would we fucking use?!
The mycelium network thing is way overblown - it allows some crude, undetectedundirected signals to pass.

They also nurse their sick and keep stumps from dying - from The Secret Life of Trees, which also supports your comments

Fungi are older than literal roots. The first land plants relied on them for nutrient exchange before evolving a radical system. My mind was blown away during a presentation by Dr. Toby Kiers about the latest research on mycorrhizal networks. They directly imaged nutrients moving both ways through those narrow filaments! Which is impressive on its own, but completely mind-fucked me when I noticed they were in real-time. https://www.spun.earth/networks/mycorrhizal-fungi

Fungi are much older. Source

Plants are older than thought: 500 million years old. Source

The earliest fungi started to develop 1.5 billion years ago, with other types 635 to 400 million years ago. Source

In fact, both flora and fauna can't survive without fungi. Source

Pando? But that's only in the ten-thousands.

Closer to omnicide, like, basically everything died.

To say nothing of their cowardly inaction on Ukraine and Palestine.

I can't remember where, but I read recently that the pace of Amazon destruction was noted to be slowing recently. Maybe cbc.ca. It stuck with me cuz I literally thought "oh finally a nice piece of news in this desperate wasteland". Granted, things aren't looking great, but dare we hope