From the Intelligence of Plants to That of Children
Children are very good at recognizing plants with which they can learn certain cultural skills and exercise certain mental abilities. Some of these plants, such as the buttercup or daisy, are the subject of children’s traditions that are transmitted from generation to generation during forest schools, those moments when children let their imaginations run wild in contact with the beings of their environment. The intellectual potential that plants can bring to the human mind cannot be understood without taking into account the role that the plant plays in it and the way it reveals itself to children. In order to be chosen, the plant must combine a set of particular forms that meet the expectations of the child’s mind and which premeditate the development of particular skills. So it is possible to question the nature of the interactive link between the intelligence of the plant and that of the child developed during these sensitive experiences, taking as a common definition of intelligence, the ability to communicate forms. To inaugurate this discussion, this article proposes to focus attention on ethnographic profiles of some of the plants with which children learn to count, speak, write, love, meditate... whether in forest schools in France, Morocco, India and elsewhere.