Smart plants learn new habits

well plants do react to their environment in a number of ways...

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-smart-habits.html

Smart plants learn new habits

A new study led by The University of Western Australia has demonstrated for the first time that plants can learn about their environment by making links between events, an ability thought to be exclusive to animals.
The international research team, led by Research Associate Professor Monica Gagliano from UWA's Centre for Evolutionary Biology, in collaboration with researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Zurich, set out to prove plants were capable of associative learning.
The study, published in the online journal Scientific Reports, was inspired by Pavlov's experiments with dogs, one of the most revealing studies in the history of behavioural research, which demonstrated that behaviour could be changed using conditioning.

The study, published in the online journal Scientific Reports, was inspired by Pavlov's experiments with dogs, one of the most revealing studies in the history of behavioural research, which demonstrated that behaviour could be changed using conditioning.
Through a range of behavioural experiments, the team was able to provide convincing evidence that plants were capable of learning a particular association between the occurrence of one event and the anticipation of another.
Professor Gagliano experimented with pea seedlings, placing them in a Y-shaped maze to see how they responded after initially being exposed to light from a particular direction.
The results showed the seedlings were able to learn and choose the best growth direction for survival by correctly predicting the occurrence of light once it was removed.

I am not sure about *smart* plants, but the greatest gift given to the entire Creation seems to me the ability to adapt. Humans and animals adapt to their surroundings, and we call it learning, so it is not too surprising to think that plants can too, inasmuch as they can. they are limited by having to bloom where they are planted, of course, but the senescence of leaves in the Fall is a smart adaptation of sorts: the energy that was in the leaves and made them green need to return to the subsoil to provide energy to the roots. They can regrow limbs after pruning, which we can't, and survive drought and fire.
They can change according to the weather or to the chemicals placed near them, and the changes of the seasons. All these phenomena are examples of adaptation to the stimuli they get from their surroundings. Do they 'know', intellectually, what they have to do? I don't think so, but they adapt to their surroundings, just like we do.