For a long time in western society, animals were regarded by many people as automatons with little or no ability to feel, think, decide, or be self aware.
Plants have been denigrated in the same way as non-feeling, unconscious objects.
It is now more extensively acknowledged that plants, too, are conscious, feeling, and thinking, like humans, but expressed uniquely in their different forms. It’s taking humans awhile to be aware of plant sentience and intelligence, just as it did with animals.
