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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** | ||
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==== Introduction ==== | ==== Introduction ==== | ||
- | < | + | < |
Raoul Francé put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, | Raoul Francé put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, | ||
that the only reason we don't appreciate the fact is that plants do so at | that the only reason we don't appreciate the fact is that plants do so at | ||
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not moved, either toward the plant or toward the recording machine. | not moved, either toward the plant or toward the recording machine. | ||
**Could the plant have been reading his mind**? | **Could the plant have been reading his mind**? | ||
+ | |||
+ | // | ||
+ | related libarynth topics:// | ||
+ | * [[plant perception]] | ||
+ | * [[groworld HPI ii]] | ||
------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | ||
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==== Latest Soviet Discoveries ==== | ==== Latest Soviet Discoveries ==== | ||
- | < | + | < |
---biologist Karamanov published "**The Application of Automation and Cybernetics to Plant Husbandry.**" | ---biologist Karamanov published "**The Application of Automation and Cybernetics to Plant Husbandry.**" | ||
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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 topic// | ||
----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
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- | < | + | < |
+ | 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 " | ||
+ | |||
+ | // | ||
+ | related libarynth topic: // [[plant movement]] | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---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' | ||
+ | --------------- | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== The Metamorphosis of Plants ==== | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | and extinct, their uses, classification, | ||
+ | distribution, | ||
+ | taxonomy, an endless Latin dirge**, in which progress is measured more | ||
+ | by the number of corpses cataloged than by the number of blossoms | ||
+ | cherished, is perhaps the greatest mystery in the study of plant life. Pg 104 | ||
+ | |||
+ | **The pollen of most plants has a highly inflammable character**; | ||
+ | thrown on a red-hot surface it will ignite as quickly as gunpowder. | ||
+ | Artificial lightning was formerly produced on the theatrical stage by | ||
+ | throwing the pollen grains of the Lycopodium or club mosses onto a hot | ||
+ | shovel. In many plants the pollen diffuses an odor bearing the most | ||
+ | striking resemblance to the seminal emission of animals and man. | ||
+ | The spermatozoa of certain mosses carried in the morning dew in search of females, is guided by its taste for malic acid toward the delicate cups at the bottom of | ||
+ | which lie moss eggs to be fertilized. **The spermatozoa of ferns**, on the | ||
+ | other hand, liking sugar, **find their females in pools of sweetened water**. Pg 107 | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---For years Goethe had been distressed by the limitations involved in a merely analytical and | ||
+ | intellectual approach to the plant world, typified by **the cataloging mind | ||
+ | of the eighteenth century**, and of a theory of physics, then triumphant, | ||
+ | which submitted the world to blind laws of mechanics, to a "jeu de | ||
+ | rouages et de ressorts sans vie." | ||
+ | ------------------- | ||
+ | ==== Plants Will Grow to Please ==== | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | trees finally consume man and, by combining his remains together with raw earth, water, air, and sunlight, transform and transmute human bodies into the most glorious forms and | ||
+ | colors? | ||
+ | ---------- | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Tuned to the Music of the Spheres ===== | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==== The Harmonic Life of Plants ==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | < | ||
+ | began wondering whether sound, properly prescribed, could spur field crops to greater yields. From 1960 to 1963 he piped the " | ||
+ | speaker to paddy rice growing in | ||
+ | the fields** of seven villages on the Bay of Bengal, and got harvests ranging consistently from | ||
+ | 25 to 60 percent higher than the regional average. He also was able | ||
+ | musically to provoke peanuts and chewing tobacco into producing nearly | ||
+ | 50 percent more than normal. Singh further reported that merely by | ||
+ | dancing the " | ||
+ | out musical accompaniment and executed by **girls without trinkets on their ankles, the growth of Michaelmas daisies, marigolds, and petunias | ||
+ | was very much accelerated**, | ||
+ | night earlier than controls, presumably because of the rhythm of the | ||
+ | footwork transmitted through the earth. | ||
+ | |||
+ | --- | ||
+ | In the mid-1960s two researchers at Canada' | ||
+ | Measures and Pearl Weinberger were conversant that ultrasonic frequencies markedly affect the germination and growth of | ||
+ | barley, sunflower, spruce, Jack pine, Siberian pea tree, and other seeds | ||
+ | and seedlings However, the very | ||
+ | frequencies which stimulated some plant species inhibited others. They wondered whether specific audible frequencies in | ||
+ | the sonic range would be as effective as music in enhancing the growth | ||
+ | of wheat. | ||
+ | In a series of experiments lasting more than four years, the two | ||
+ | biologists exposed the grains and seedlings of spring Marquis and winter | ||
+ | Rideau wheat to high-frequency vibrations. They found that, depending | ||
+ | on how long the wheat seeds had been vernalized, **the plants responded | ||
+ | best to a frequency of 5,000 cycles a second**. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---1973 Dr. Weinberger said **basic farm equipment of the future will include an oscillator** for production | ||
+ | of sound waves and a speaker." | ||
+ | they discovered that experimental " | ||
+ | away from a 727 jet plane** about to take off, caused turnips to sprout much faster than those left silently in the ground. Pg 152 | ||
+ | |||
+ | Allotting one chamber for a control group, Mrs. Dorothy Retallack, a Danish professional organist and mezzo soprano in 1968 used the | ||
+ | same plants, as in the first experiment, | ||
+ | setting them in identical soil and affording them equal amounts of water | ||
+ | on schedule. Trying to pinpoint the musical note most conducive to | ||
+ | survival, each day she tried an **F note, played unremittingly for eight | ||
+ | hours in one chamber** and three hours intermittently in another. In the | ||
+ | first chamber her plants were **stone dead within two weeks**. In the | ||
+ | second ·chamber, the plants were much healthier than controls left in | ||
+ | silence. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ---The cucurbits were hardly indifferent to the two musical forms: those | ||
+ | exposed to Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and other eighteenth- | ||
+ | and nineteenth-century European scores g**rew toward the transistor | ||
+ | radio**, one of them even twining itself lovingly around it. The other | ||
+ | squashes grew away from the rock broadcasts and even tried to climb | ||
+ | the slippery walls of their glass cage. Pg 154 | ||
+ | The plants gave positive evidence of **liking Bach, since they leaned | ||
+ | an unprecedented thirty-five degrees toward the preludes**. But even this | ||
+ | affirmation was far exceeded by their reaction to Shankar: in their | ||
+ | straining to reach the source of the classical Indian music they bent | ||
+ | more than halfway to the horizontal, at angles in excess of sixty degrees, | ||
+ | **the nearest one almost embracing the speaker**. | ||
+ | |||
+ | --Jazz caused her a real surprise. When her plants heard recordings as | ||
+ | varied as Duke Ellington' | ||
+ | strong, 55 percent of the plants leaned fifteen to twenty degrees toward | ||
+ | the speaker, and growth was more abundant than in the silent chamber. Pg 156 | ||
+ | |||
+ | -------------------------- | ||
+ | ----------------------------- | ||
+ | === related libarynth topics === | ||
+ | * [[plant perception]] | ||
+ | * [[plant movement]] | ||
+ | * [[HPI]] | ||