For a plant to thrive, it needs all of its needs met like a human does. It needs to be fully dealienated from nutritional and environmental needs. Any kind of disruption to the broader systems it exists through- its need for water being denied by a drought, its need for sunlight obscured by a competing tree, its need for oxygen deprived by flood and iron by the soil's relationship to hydrogen- will harm or kill it and change those ecosystems as a result of it no longer providing some kind of labour to keep its current state. There's both a fundamental sense of balance there and a constantly evolving one, with the plant and its needs never existing in a static state along with the outside world it depends on. Like the other plants competing for sunlight and nutrition, that plant exists within a broader network of life. Herbivores depend on it and fertilise it, earthworms carve out root space while feeding on the organic matter, specific insects pollinate specific orchids and any disruption to the needs of the insect existing within that ecosystem will erase that species of orchid as a result of it not doing some kind of metabolic labour which continues its relationship. The bee transforms the pollen into the embryo in exchange for the honey that sustains its hive. There's a yin-yang aspect to that interconnectivity and it exists- has to exist- at all levels of interaction between an organism and its environment. As the ecosystem and its balance shift over time, the dialectical relationships based around resource needs and availability along with the social systems those create will make for new plants interacting with new animals in new ways.

My big interests in it are phytopathology where you're finding out what the contradictions are in a plant's needs, integrated pest management where you're directly affecting the organism relationships in the ecosystem, soil ecology where you see the fundamental engines of what enables plant life to exist on top of it, and permaculture where you're creating dealienated ecosystems.