Stefano Mancuso, scientist and founder of the international laboratory of plant neurobiology, presents research examining the perceptive, communicative and mnemonic abilities of plants. Plants appear to have a “decentralised brain”, smelling, listening, communicating and learning, which has allowed them to adapt to practically all environments on Earth. Mancuso writes a Bill of Rights for them, at the same time creating one for all the planet’s inhabitants.

Stefano Mancuso, plant neurobiologist and enthusiastic communicator, he has been listed by the New Yorker among those “destined to change our lives”.
Founder of plant neurobiology, he is one of the most internationally respected authorities on the study and communication of new facts regarding plants; intelligent and perceptive creature capable of choosing, learning and remembering. A professor at the University of Florence and the Accademia dei Georgofili, he directs the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology (LINV, www.linv.org), which has branches in Florence, Kitakyushu, Bonn and Paris.
In 2010 he was the first Italian scientist to be invited to speak at a TED GLOBAL talk. The video of the conference, which took place in Oxford, was seen 1 million times on the TED website. In 2013 he published the award-winning best-seller “Brilliant Green”, published by Giunti and translated into 19 languages, explaining that plants have a personality, exchange information, interact with animals, adopts specific survival strategies, have a social life and exploit energy resources in the best possible manner.
In 2014 he founded PNAT (www.pnat.net), a Univeristy of Florence start-up for the creation of plant-inspired technology. With PNAT he produced Jellyfish Barge, an autonomous and completely ecologically sustainable floating greenhouse presented at EXPO 2015, which has won various international awards.
Together with Carlo Petrini he wrote “Biodiversi”, which calls for a rethinking of life on Earth and a new pact between humankind and the planet. “Botanica” is a project that brings together music, plants and science, produced and created by Stefano Mancuso with the collaboration of Deproducers.

The event, which forms part of the programme Ogni volta unica la fine del mondo, is included in the series Endling e altre cose perdute, which explores the “end” of the Earth as a single precious and reliable home for life as we know it, the first field of study of the complex systems that provide the foundations for relationships, imagination and ecosystems that resist - barely surviving - geological, biological and human mutations.