cactus flower

The cactus on my living room windowsill flowered the other day. It rarely flowers.
That cactus is older than my 17-year-old son.
I try to give it a good life. But I feel sorry for that cactus . It is a living being... one that is living very far removed from its natural habitat... much like an animal in a zoo. It flowers, but I know it will never produce young, since there are no others nearby to mate with. This makes me think about people who never have children.
A couple of weeks ago I bought my first digital camera. One of the first pictures I took was this close-up of the cactus flower. I was amazed at the complex, chaotic beauty I found when I zoomed into the flower. It made me wonder about plants...
Do they have a primitive form of consciousness or awareness?
Do they make choices about how to evolve in their environments? Or are they merely complex, reactive "machines"?
What drives them to procreate? Why do they want to live? What is the point of it? Do they have a choice?
Plants are made up from the same four DNA building blocks as we are... just differently arranged. So we are distantly-related. Do we communicate with all living beings on some subatomic subconscious level?