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secret_life_of_plants [2011-04-09 21:16] – cocky | secret_life_of_plants [2011-04-10 17:34] – [Latest Soviet Discoveries] cocky | ||
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- | ====== The Secret | + | ====== The Secret |
**The Secret Life of Plants: by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, 1973** | **The Secret Life of Plants: by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, 1973** | ||
- | [[reading_notes]] by [[Cocky_Eek]] | + | [[reading_notes]] by [[Cocky_Eek]] |
- | === Introduction === | + | ==== Introduction ==== |
+ | |||
< | < | ||
Raoul Francé put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, | Raoul Francé put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, | ||
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- | === ESP, or extrasensory perception === | + | ==== ESP, or extrasensory perception ==== |
+ | |||
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wife, proclaimed that all living cells produce an invisible radiation. | wife, proclaimed that all living cells produce an invisible radiation. | ||
- | ---Since glass and gelatin are known to block various ultraviolet | ||
- | frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. | ||
- | them. Pg 54 | ||
---1969. Lawrence; Four main questions, were starting to attract serious | ---1969. Lawrence; Four main questions, were starting to attract serious | ||
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---------------------- | ---------------------- | ||
- | === Latest Soviet Discoveries === | + | ==== Latest Soviet Discoveries ==== |
+ | |||
< | < | ||
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that in the next quarter century such photoelements could be manufac· | that in the next quarter century such photoelements could be manufac· | ||
tured on an industrial scale and would be a hundred times cheaper than | tured on an industrial scale and would be a hundred times cheaper than | ||
- | silicone solar batteries now being experimented with. Pg 76 | + | silicone solar batteries now being experimented with. Pg 76 related libarint topic; [[luminous: |
----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
- | === pioneers | + | ==== Pioneers |
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
+ | of carrots and turnips, which, of all vegetables, appeared to him the most | ||
+ | stolidly nonsentient, | ||
+ | chloroformed plants, Bose discovered that they were as successfully | ||
+ | anesthetized as animals, and that when the narcotic vapor was blown | ||
+ | away by fresh air like animals they revived. **Using chloroform to tranquilize a huge pine tree,** Bose was able to uproot it and transplant it without | ||
+ | the usually fatal shock of such operations. Pg 87 | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---Since Bose knew that in plants there was respiration without gills or lungs, | ||
+ | digestion without a stomach, and movements without muscles, it | ||
+ | seemed plausible to him that there could be the same kind of excitation | ||
+ | as in higher animals but without a complicated nervous system. | ||
+ | Bose concluded that the only way to find out about the unseen | ||
+ | changes which take place in plants and **tell if they were excited or | ||
+ | depressed** would be to measure visually their responses to what he | ||
+ | called " | ||
+ | the plant give an answering signal. Secondly, we have to supply the | ||
+ | means for an automatic conversion of these signals into an intelligent | ||
+ | script. And, last of all, we have ourselves to learn the nature of these | ||
+ | hieroglyphics." | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---Bose was able to show how the skins | ||
+ | of lizards, tortoises, and frogs as well as those of grapes, tomatoes behaved similarly. He found that the vegetal | ||
+ | digestive organs in insectivorous plants, from the tentacle of a sundew | ||
+ | to the hair-lined flap of a pitcher plant, were analogous to animal stom- | ||
+ | achs. He discovered close parallels between the response to light in | ||
+ | leaves and in the retinas of animal eyes. With his magnifier he proved | ||
+ | that plants become as fatigued by continuous stimulation as animal | ||
+ | muscles, whether they were **hypersensitive mimosas or undemonstrative | ||
+ | radishes**. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---Working with the **Desmodium gyrans, a species whose continuously | ||
+ | oscillating leaves recall the motion of semaphore flags** and led to its | ||
+ | common appellation, | ||
+ | could stop its automatic ceaseless pulsation would also stop an animal | ||
+ | heart and that the antidote for this poison could bring both organisms | ||
+ | back to life. Pg 92 | ||
+ | |||
+ | In Desmodium gyrans, or the telegraph plant, Bose found that if the | ||
+ | cut end of a detached leaflet was dipped in water in a bent glass tube | ||
+ | it r**ecovered from the shock of its amputation and began to pulsate anew**. | ||
+ | Was this not like an excised animal heart which can be kept beating in | ||
+ | Ringer' | ||
+ | is lowered and starts again when pressure is raised, Bose found the same | ||
+ | was true for the pulsation of the Desmodium when the sap pressure was | ||
+ | increased or decreased. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | --- One day Bose found | ||
+ | that when all motion stopped in his plant, it suddenly shuddered in a | ||
+ | way reminiscent of the death spasm in animals. To determine exactly | ||
+ | the critical temperature at which death occurred, he invented a **moro- | ||
+ | graph, or death recorder.** While many plants met their end at sixty | ||
+ | degrees centigrade, individual plants exhibited variations depending on | ||
+ | their previous histories and ages. If their power of resistance was artificially depressed by fatigue, or poison, the death spasm would take place | ||
+ | with temperatures as low as twenty-three degrees Centigrade. At death, | ||
+ | the plant threw off a huge electrical force. **Five hundred green peas | ||
+ | could develop five hundred volts,** said Bose, **enough to fulminate a cook | ||
+ | but for the fact that peas are seldom connected in series.** | ||
+ | Though it had been thought that plants liked unlimited quantities of | ||
+ | carbon dioxide, Bose found that too much of this gas could suffocate | ||
+ | them, but that they could then be revived, just like animals, with oxygen. | ||
+ | Like human beings, **plants became intoxicated when given shots of | ||
+ | whiskey or gin,** swayed like any barroom drunkard, passed out, and | ||
+ | eventually revived, with definite signs of a hangover. These findings | ||
+ | together with hundreds of other data were published in two massive | ||
+ | volumes in 1906 and 1907. Pg 94 | ||
+ | |||
+ | Boses invention the crescograph not only produced a ten-thousand-fold magnification of movement, | ||
+ | far beyond the powers of the strongest microscope, but could automati- | ||
+ | cally record the rate of growth of plants and their changes in a period | ||
+ | as short as a minute. | ||
+ | Bose showed the remarkable fact that in countless plants, **growth proceeds in rhythmic pulses.** each pulse exhibiting' | ||
+ | rapid uplift and then a slower partial recoil of about a fourth the distance | ||
+ | gained. The pulses in Calcutta averaged about three per minute. By | ||
+ | watching the progress of the movement on the chart Bose found that **growth in some plants could be retarded and even | ||
+ | halted by merely touching them, and that in others rough handling | ||
+ | stimulated growth, especially if they were sluggish and morose.** Pg 99 | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---The roots of plants are called " | ||
+ | the soil. Leaves turn to light because they are " | ||
+ | bending against the flow of a stream " | ||
+ | is known as its " | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---Bose now in retirement summud his scientific philosophy: | ||
+ | “Is there any possible relation between our own life and that of the plant | ||
+ | world? The question is not one of speculation but of actual demonstration | ||
+ | by some method that is unimpeachable. This means that we should | ||
+ | abandon all our preconceptions, | ||
+ | absolutely groundless and contrary to facts. The final appeal must be | ||
+ | made to the plant itself and no evidence should be accepted unless **it bears | ||
+ | the plant' | ||
+ | |||
- | < | ||
+ | === related libarynth topics === | ||
+ | * [[plant perception]] | ||
+ | * [[plant movement]] | ||
+ | * [[HPI]] | ||