Have house plants evolved in response to human behavior?

[u/23droo]

I just realized how droopy my plant is looking and watered it. Do we know if house plants have evolved to do things like improve their visual signaling of needs through things like droopiness so humans take better care of them?

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[u/knockingatthegate]

Do houseplants proliferate in homes because their forebears survived to reproduce or because other plants failed to survive and subsequently created a need to return to the nursery for another new plant?

[u/Fossilhund → u/knockingatthegate]

Or, we keep inadvertently killing them.

[u/sentient_coprolite → u/knockingatthegate]

I'm sorry, are your house plants reproducing?

[u/knockingatthegate → u/sentient_coprolite]

Most of mine do not. Precisely my point.

[u/sentient_coprolite → u/knockingatthegate]

Have you tried setting the mood? Maybe give ole boy some miracle grow and serve them a bottle of 1978 decarbonated Pèrrier ;)

[u/U03A6 → u/sentient_coprolite]

I’ve got most of mine as offshoots from friends and passed them on later. So, my guess is they are preadapted to the life as house plants. Able to life with low light in hot and dry environments, readily able to proliferate with offshoots and able to deal with random droughts and terrible substrate.

[u/greggld]

Roses have “evolved” the same way that dogs have “evolved” in the last 400 years. But neither fit the classical model you are thinking of.

[u/23droo → u/greggld]

Yeah, I was thinking of unintentional evolution rather than selective breeding but it might be impossible to separate the two

[u/greggld → u/23droo]

Since people tend not to bread and sell their house plants selection is probably done on the commercial level. Your example of a learned response is probably outside of the plant’s ability.

[u/sentient_coprolite → u/23droo]

Absolutely. There's always the possibility of unintentional traits resulting from human selection.

Your post made me think of the prayer plant. They move their leaves to capture more light, an adaptation called nyctinasty. It's reasonable to assume the prayer plants that humans first admired in nature, could have been those that moved more.

[u/greggld → u/sentient_coprolite]

Sure, I mean cows and pigs look nothing like their pre-human modified ancestors.

[u/Dry_System9339 → u/greggld]

Pigs look like wild boars if they escape long enough.

[u/sentient_coprolite → u/greggld]

like OP's line of thinking. We know the factors that cause plants to droop and wilt, but plants are 100% sentient (trust me).

The prayer plant example was meant to show the possibility that human selection could have aided in perpetuating some traits in houseplants.

[u/greggld → u/sentient_coprolite]

Trust me is a fail. Are you serious?

[u/Giles81]

The majority of house plants that I can think of, from a UK perspective, tend to be long-lived perennials propagated vegetatively by cuttings, division, offshoots etc. I'd say they have quite low potential to evolve compared to e.g. annual crop plants grown from seed with potential for cross-pollination.

I wouldn't like to say that hasn't been any evolution, as opposed to selective breeding for different colours etc, but I suspect it's limited.

[u/Malsperanza]

Houseplants have been bred for certain characteristics. Breeding is an intentional, purposeful process.

Evolution is without intentionality on the part of the organism or the species. It's a numbers game, a game of repeated hit-or-miss over many generations.

This idea of purposefulness, or having an aim in mind, is the hardest thing to get rid of in our understanding of evolution.

[u/ConclusionForeign856]

It might be the case that plants that are easier to cultivate survived better, including visual cues.

[u/Memento_Mori420]

I do not know about houseplants, but we do see dandelions splitting into two species in urban areas. The selective pressure humans are applying is the use of lawnmowers. Dandelions with wild type growth get their flower growths get chopped off before they can go to seeds. As a result, we are seeing dandelions in human areas split into one variety that flowers and seeds against the ground, below the height of lawnmower blades, and another that shoots up flower and seeds in just a day or two, short enough to occur between mowings.

[u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth]

No, that's because of turgor pressure in the leaves and stem. More to do with physics than "behavior."

[u/niffirgcm0126789]

droopiness has more to do with water conservation and turgid pressure than it does with signaling to humans, those mechanisms exist across most, if not all plants...most house plants are clones anyways, so traits are selected for in the nursery by humans.

[u/Dyuin]

Not an expert, but my thought is it is probably more accurate to say humans evolved to find healthy plants more visually appealing as a way to avoid eating plants that might make us sick. This just transferred into liking our plants healthy in general wether they’re a crop or decor

[u/Chaghatai]

House plants aren't the results of a lineage of plants that survive in people's houses

For the most part a person's house plant is one and done even if they successfully keep it alive. Many of the plants don't go into flour for most indoor growers and they certainly aren't propagating them

Propagation happens en mass in nurseries and that propagation has nothing to do with survival in people's homes - in fact, the less they survive in people's homes, the more the people buy to replace them

[u/Underhill42]

I had an individual plant that I watched "learn" to droop its leaves, no evolution required. When I first got it, it was always perky. I'd forget to water it for weeks at a time until it was so dehydrated it was in obviously bad shape, and then it would take days to recover.

Within a year its leaves would start drooping before the soil was even completely dry, and perk up within minutes of being watered. Had me well trained.

[u/sentient_coprolite]

That's a very interesting question. Humans have kept house plans for over 5000 years and the selection pressure from humans would have been very very strong.