Everyone knows that life is not life without friendship , if at least in part one wants to live as free men ("Laelius de amicitia", MTCicerone). In Latin "amicitia" comes from "amicus", literally "he who loves". Because love, friendship, loving, loving each other are all shades of life. Coloured. Friendship means networking, staying united, spending oneself for others selflessly. Nor is this a complete formula that indicates friendship.
Plants immediately understood the importance of friendship . It sounds absurd but it isn't. And Stefano Mancuso, professor at the University of Florence and director of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology, and the Friulian former forest ranger Pietro Maroè tell it in their book 'The shyness of the foliage'. “The baby sunflowers, as soon as they are born, make apparently useless movements: they are the first attempts at social life”, explains Maroè. There is the big one who takes care of the little one: “Imagine a seed, an acorn, which falls on the ground of a forest. A tree needs all the light possible to carry out photosynthesis, but the undergrowth is a dark place, where both the quality and quantity of light are not suitable for the life of a plant ”. For Maroè, it is the plants close to the unborn child and belonging to the same clan that take on the maintenance of the young shoot ". The same prof. Mancuso explains it in an interview with Corriere della Sera on 1 July 2019 by Walter Veltroni: "The natural forest is as if it were a single organism. with the others. They can be directly connected, through the roots, to hundreds, literally hundreds, of neighboring plants. What is the mutual support? The mutual support lies in the fact that through these roots the plants exchange information on the state of the environment, and they exchange nutrients, water. Imagine a seed falling in a forest, a dark place. The seed, before it can reach a height such as to be able to photosynthesize, has to wait many years. How does this seed live? It is the childhood of the tree. You will not believe it but at that moment it is the adult trees that feed it. "
And isn't this friendship selfless?
Happy world friendship day from CanaPuglia and its plants!