No, plants feel pain when cut is not backed by science in the way most people picture pain. Plants lack a brain and a nervous system, which are both needed to feel pain the way animals do when they get hurt.
Plant sensation is real, but it works in a much different way than what you and I feel. Plants can pick up on heat, light, touch, and damage through cells that send signals across the plant body.
In my experience, my first time taking a cutting from a healthy plant felt awful. When I first cut through the stem with my sharp knife, my hand shook. A weird wave of guilt washed over me at the time.
Once I learned the science on this topic, the guilt faded away in a hurry. I found that plants do not suffer the way a dog or cat does when hurt. That made your whole act of cutting feel right again to me.
The technical side of the plant pain response comes down to a few key chemicals. When you cut a plant, it sends out jasmonic acid through its tissues as a stress signal to the rest of the plant body.
These chemicals act like a warning system that tells the rest of the plant to brace for more damage. Volatile compounds even drift out as gas and warn nearby plants in the area to ready their own defense systems.
This whole loop happens with no brain at all to feel or sort the signals into pain. The plant just reacts on a cell by cell basis, much like how your skin clots blood from a small cut without your brain having to think about it.
A 2014 University of Missouri study put this to the test in a clever way. The team played the sound of caterpillars chewing leaves to plants that had no real bugs on them at the time.
The plants put out chemical defenses in response to just the sound alone, with no real damage from a bug. This shows plants pick up on signals from their world, but it does not mean they feel pain in any aware way.
Sensation and pain are two very different things in the eyes of biology. Your phone can sense your touch, but it does not feel pain when you press the screen too hard with your finger or a stylus.
Do plants feel pain the way a fish or a bird does? The clear answer from biology is no, since the brain and nervous system needed for that kind of conscious pain just are not there in plant tissue.
Plants do respond to harm, though, and you can be kind to them as you propagate. Use sharp sterile tools for every cut, since dull blades crush the vascular tissue and cause a much bigger stress reaction in the plant.
Wipe your scissors with rubbing alcohol before and after each cut to keep germs from spreading across plants. This small step cuts down the stress response and helps the cutting heal up much faster on its own.
Cut just below a node with one clean slice, then dip the end in rooting hormone if you have it on hand. The plant will send a brief stress signal and then settle in to the work of growing new roots for you.
Read the full article: Plant Propagation: Complete Beginner Guide
