Plants can learn and remember, but are they thinking ?

I already went off on something of a rant about consciousness here :
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/1arJX2qaYZb
... but this one is a bit different.

Plants have preferences—their roots move toward water, sensing its acoustic vibes—and defense mechanisms. They also have memories, and can learn from experience. One 2014 experiment, for example, involved dropping potted plants called Mimosa pudicas a short distance. At first, when the plants were dropped, they curled up their leaves defensively. But soon the plants learned that no harm would come to them, and they stopped protecting themselves.

I read the linked paper, which is rather interesting regardless of whether plants can think or not. The researchers also investigated whether the plants would stop their defence mechanism when stimulated in a similar but not identical manner (shaken on a platform instead of being dropped). They don't. Only the behaviour they have learned is safe prevents (or reduces) their leaf-closing. They have to be conditioned through several drops before they stop reacting, but thereafter can repeat this behaviour at least a month after any drops have occurred. They also seem to account for the available light levels, since closing leaves reduces photosynthesis.

What they did not do was really demonstrate if plants learn to do this because they realise the drop is perfectly safe. What I'd want is a control experiment where some plants are deliberately damaged immediately after or during the drop. If the plants are learning to avoid unnecessary defensive responses, they ought to show the standard defensive reaction to the drop (or even an enhanced one) when it causes damage.

Also interesting :

Researchers had arrested plant motion with anesthetics—a new take on a 1902 experiment by biologist and physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who used chloroform to put plants to sleep. The Times wrote that the vegetal response to anesthetics suggests that plants are intelligent. Basically, the article argued that to lose consciousness, one must have consciousness—so if plants seem to lose consciousness under anesthetics, they must, in some way, possess it.

Marder points out that plant cuttings can survive and grow independently. That suggests that if plants do have a self, it is likely dispersed and unconfined, unlike the human sense of self. It’s notable, too, that many scientists and mystics argue that the human feeling of individuality—of being a self within a particular body—is a necessary illusion.

Well, good for them, but I'll never believe it. I'm me, you're you. You're not me and I'm not you. Done.
https://qz.com/1294941/a-debate-over-plant-consciousness-is-forcing-us-to-confront-the-limitations-of-the-human-mind/