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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko

Dumbler  
  Half-sentient spores of the whistle thistle.  

Lily-yo climbed astride the hooked base of the dumbler, whispering softly to it… The tips of their feathered spokes carried seeds; the seeds were strangely shaped, so that a light breeze whispering in them made them into ears that listened to every advantage of the wind that would spread their propagation. Humans, after long years of practice, could use these crude ears for their own purposes…
Technovelgy from Hothouse, by Brian Aldiss.
Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1962
Additional resources -

Compare to the treeship from the 1989 Dan Simmons novel Hyperion and to the dray-fish from Jack Vance's brilliant 1976 short story The Moon Moth.

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  More Ideas and Technology from Hothouse
  More Ideas and Technology by Brian Aldiss
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