a couple months ago someone sent me an ask asking if I’d ever heard of Boquila trifoliolata and I was like ‘no way. this can’t be real’ and i looked it up and it was and I forgot about it until just now when my supervisor and I got sidetracked and I looked it up again to prove to her that it’s real and found out that not only does this plant vaguely mimic the leaves of whatever plant it’s vining on, it does it when it climbs on fake plants too so any theories about how it does it that include gene transfer or chemicals or touching it in any way are just out the window and those were like, the only theories the original researchers had about how it might be doing it. so anyway I am screaming and crying and whatnot
Here’s a link to the paper discussing their phenomenon. It really seems like Boquila trifoliolata might be able to “see”, since it’s apparently capable of mimicking the appearance and structure of plastic plants.
Like these are images from the paper I linked above
The one labeled “A” is a normal leaf, the one labeled “B” is Boquila attempting to mimic, the second pic shows what the fake leaves looked like, and the last pic is full mimicry
Brinens and Things 