It sounds like a joke, but plants do respond to abuse.

The scientists found out that the new electrical signal they called "system potential" was induced and even modulated by wounding. If a plant leaf is wounded, the signal strength can be different and can be measured over long distances in unwounded leaves, depending on the kind and concentration of added cations (e.g. calcium, potassium, or magnesium). It is not the transport of ions across cell membranes that causes the observed changes in voltage transmitted from leaf to shoot and then to the next leaf, but the activation of so-called proton pumps. "This is the reason why the "system potential" we measured cannot at all be compared to the classic action potential as present in nerves of animals and also in plants", says Hubert Felle from Gießen University. Action potentials follow all-or-none characteristics: they are activated if a certain stimulus threshold is reached and then spread constantly. The "system potential", however, can carry different information at the same time: The strength of the inducing stimulus (wound signal) can influence the amplitude of the systemic signal as well as the effect of different ions. "We may be on the trail of an important signal transmission system that is induced by insect herbivory. Within minutes the whole plant is alerted and the plant's defense against its enemy is activated" . . .

Since I'm in the herbivory business, information about how plants respond to predation interests me. There are folk ideas that seem intriguing but are not supported by science that I'm aware of. One is that a plant responds differently to grazing than it does to machine clipping, though the result of both appears much the same from a distance. One speculative explanation of this that I've heard is that in grazing the plant is tugged as well as cut, the cut is ragged rather than clean, and the "wound" is bathed in saliva. Is there some explanation informed by knowledge of system potential?