Late at night, the light shone brightly through the dust grimed window of the office building facing new york times square. At his desk sat Cleve Backster, Americas foremost lie detector expert. Tapping his pen, thinking of nothing in particular, his eyes rested upon his favourite plant. He had felt his bare office needed a touch of green and so his constant companion was a house plant called Dracaena Massangaena, or commonly known as the dragon tree. On impulse he found himself attaching an electrode to one of its leaves. Pouring water on its roots, the pen attatched to a galvonometer began to move. A galvonometer is the part of a polygraph lie detector, which, when attatched to a human being, causes the needle to move in response to the slightest surge of human emotions. Backsters dragon tree, to his amazement, was producing reactions similar to those recorded on human beings. Surely, he thought, plants do not possess emotions.

 

The most effective way to trigger a human response is to threaten his or her wellbeing. Backster decided he would set fire to one of its leaves. As soon as he thought this, the patterns on the graph immediately changed. Instead of even little ridges, there was a prolonged upward sweep of the recording pen. Backster was stunned, as outrageous as it seemed, not only was the plant expressing emotions, it was reading his mind. During the next few months, chart after chart was obtained from different plants. The plants reacted not only to human threats, but threats from other sources, such as the sudden appearance of a dog in the room. On one occasion Backster provided an interview for the baltimore sun, hooking a galvonometer to his plant, he proceeded to interogate the reporter about the date of his birth. The reporter was told to say no to each of the seven years between 1925 and 1931, even though one of these years was the correct year. By looking at the chart Backster could determine the correct year, somehow, the plant had responded when the correct year was mentioned.

 

Another experiment involved six students. Unknown to anyone else, one of the students walked into a room containing two plants. One of them was uprooted, stamped upon and thoroughly destroyed. By attatching the surviving plant to a polygraph and parading the students one by one before it, he was able to identify the killer. The plant gave no response when each of the other five had individually entered the room, however, when the killer appeared, the meter went wild.

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Dr Hashimoto has a doctorate from Tokyo University, he is chief of the Hashimoto electronics research centre and managing director for research for the fuji electronic industries. His ideas were more revolutionary than even Backsters, he desired to have a conversation with a plant. He developed a system where he could transform the tracings on a graph into modulated sounds, giving a voice to the plant. His first experiment with a cactus was a failure. Deciding it was he, who was the problem, he let his green fingered wife have a try, and in no time she got sensational results.

 

As Mrs Hashimoto assured the plant that she loved it, there was an immediate response from the cactus. Transformed and amplified by Dr Hashimotos electronic equipment, the sound produced by the plant was like the high pitched hum of high voltage wires heard from a distance, except it was more like a song, the rythm and tone being varied and pleasant, at times even warm and jolly.

 

John Francis Dougherty, who witnessed these conversations, says, it sounded as if Mrs Hashimoto, speaking in modulated Japanese, was being answered by the plant in modulated "cactese". Dougherty further reports that the Hashimotos became so intimate with their plant, they were soon able to teach it how to count and add up to twenty. In answer to how much does two plus two make, the plant responded with sounds, which when transformed back into ink tracings, produced four distinct and conjoined peaks.

 

 

In Russia, millions of newspaper readers were introduced to the idea that plants were able to communicate their feelings to human beings. Pravada, the official paper of the communist party, declared in an article "plants talk, yes they scream...it only seems they accept their misfortunes and silently bear pain". Pravada reporter V. Chartkov tells how he witnessed these extraordinary events at the laboratory for artificial climate in Moscow. "Before my eyes a barley sprout cried out when its roots were plunged into hot water, as though it had gone crazy, the recording pen wriggled out the death agony of the barley sprout, though to look at it you would think there was nothing wrong. While its leaves, as green as ever, stood upright, the plants organism was already dying, some kind of brain cells within was telling us what was happening"

 

In another interview Vladimir Karamanov, director of biocybernetics at the institute of agrophysics was asked if this and the findings of Backster was something new. "Nothing of the sort" he replied "That plants are able to perceive the surrounding world is a truth as old as the world itself. Without perception, adaptation does not and cannot exist. If plants had no sense organs and no means of transmitting and processing information, within their own language and memory, they would inevitably perish".

 

 

The magic and mystery attatched to the world of plants became the subject of a book entitled "grass" by Vladimir Soloukhim, a popular slavophile writer. He writes " Perhaps the elements of memory in plants are superficially treated, but at least they are there in black and white. Yet no-one calls his friends or neighbours, no-one shouts over the telephone, have you heard the news? plants can feel, they can feel pain, they cry out, plants remember everything.

 

When Soloukhin did telephone his friends, he learned that a prominent member of the soviet academy of sciences working on the outskirts of Siberias largest industrial centre had made the following statement "Dont be amazed we too are carrying out many experiments of this kind and they all point to one thing - Plants have memory, they are able to gather impressions and retain them over long periods of time. We had a man molest and torture a geranium for several days in a row, he pinched it, tore it, pricked its leaves with a needle, dripped acid on its living tissues, burnt it with a match and cut its roots. Another man took tender care of it, watered it, worked its soil, sprayed it with fresh water, supported its heavy branches and treated its burns and wounds. When we attatched our instruments to the plant, what do you think happened? As soon as the torturer came near the plant, the recording instrument went wild, the plant did not "just" get nervous, it was horrified. If it could it would have either thrown itself out of the window, or it would have attacked him. When the attacker left and the friend appeared, the geranium calmed down, its impulses died down and the recorder traced out smooth, one might say tender lines on the graph".

 

 

The first botanist to demonstrate that flowering plants have sex and that pollen is necessary for fertilisation and seed formation was Rudolf Jakob Camerarius, a professor of medicine and director of the botanical gardens at tubingen. The idea there could be a sexual difference in plants caused general astonishment and the scientific community of that day considered it "the wildest and most singular invention that ever evolved from a poets mind" It was more than a generation before it was fully established that plants had sexual organs and could be elevated to a higher sphere of creation.

Even so, that plants have female organs in the form of vulva, vagina, uterus, and ovaries, serving precisely the same functions as they do in women, as well as distinct male organs in the form of penis, glans and testes, designed to sprinkle the air with billions of spermatoza, were facts quickly covered over with an almost impenetrable veil of latin nomenclature. The vulva and vagina became stigmata and style and the penis and glans became the filament and anther.

This discovery of sex in plants set the stage for the generator of systematic botany. Raoul France, a great lover of plants, made the following lamentation "Wherever they went the laughing brook died, the glory of the flowers withered, the grace and joy of the meadows was transformed into withered corpses, whose crushed and discoloured bodies were described in a thousand minute latin terms. The blooming fields and the storied woods disappeared under a botanical hour into a dusty herbarium, into a dreary catalogue of Greek and Latin labels. It became the hour for the practice of tiresome dialectic, filled with discussions about the number of stamens, the shape of leaves, all of which we learnt only to forget. When the work was over we stood disenchanted and estranged from nature". These sentiments were echoed by the great Bengali scientist Sri Jagadish Chandra Bose who lamented on how such language acted like a malevolent magic to kill curiosity.

 

 

Luther Burbank, the "wizard of horticulture" revealed that when he wanted his plants to develop in a certain way, he would get down on his knees and talk to them. Burbank mentioned that plants have over twenty sensory perceptions, but, because they are different from ours nobody can recognise them. He was not sure that shrubs and flowers understood his words, but he was convinced that by some telepathy they could understand his meaning. To Paramahamsa Yogi Burbank once confided "while i was conducting my experiments with cacti, i often talked to the plant to create a vibration of love. You have nothing to fear, i would tell them, you do not need your defensive thorns, i will protect you" Burbanks power of love was greater than any other, a kind of subtle nourishment making everything grow better and grow fruit more abundantly. In all his experiments he took plants into his confidence, asked them to help and assured them he held their small lives in deep regard and affection.

 

Helen Keller once described Burbank as having "the rarest of gifts, the receptive spirit of a child. When plants talk to him, he listens, only a wise child can understand the language of plants and trees". Addressing the American pomological society he stunned the rigid academics with the following speech "In pursuing the study of any of the universal and everlasting laws of nature, whether relating to the life, growth, structure and movements of a giant planet, the tiniest plant, or the psychological movements of the human brain, some conditions are necessary before we can become one of natures interpreters, or the creator of any valuable work for the world. Preconceived notions, dogmas and all personal prejudices and bias must be laid aside. Listen patiently, quietly and reverentially to the lessons, one by one, mother nature is teaching, shredding light on what was before, a mystery, so that all that will, may see and know. She conveys her truth only to those who are passive and receptive. Accepting these truths as suggested, wherever they may lead, we have the whole universe in harmony with us. At last man has found a solid foundation for science, having discovered he is part of a universe which is eternally unstable in form, eternally immutable in substance".

 

From the book "The secret life of plants" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. If you enjoyed this article, or you would like to make a comment, please scroll down to the bottom and click "submit comment". Thankyou.