  Despite the common misconception of nearly static organisms, plants do
interact continuously with the environment and with each other. It is fair to
assume that during their evolution they developed particular features to
overcome problems and to exploit possibilities from environment. In this paper
we introduce various quantitative measures based on recent advancements in
complex network theory that allow to measure the effective similarities of
various species. By using this approach on the similarity in fruit-typology
ecological traits we obtain a clear plant classification in a way similar to
traditional taxonomic classification. This result is not trivial, since a
similar analysis done on the basis of diaspore morphological properties do not
provide any clear parameter to classify plants species. Complex network theory
can then be used in order to determine which feature amongst many can be used
to distinguish scope and possibly evolution of plants. Future uses of this
approach range from functional classification to quantitative determination of
plant communities in nature.
