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| ====== The Secret Life of Plants ====== | ====== The Secret Life of Plants ====== | ||
| - | |||
| **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 | ||
| Line 86: | Line 85: | ||
| 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]] | ||
| ------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | ||
| Line 92: | Line 96: | ||
| - | ==== ESP, or extrasensory perception ==== | + | ==== ESP, extrasensory perception ==== |
| Line 157: | Line 161: | ||
| ==== 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.**" | ||
| Line 257: | Line 261: | ||
| 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 Harmonics 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 | ||
| + | |||
| + | -------------------------- | ||
| + | ==== Plants and Electromagnetism ==== | ||
| + | < | ||
| + | continually being **affected by wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum**, from earth, moon, planets, cosmos and from a proliferation of | ||
| + | man-made devices; only it remains to be established exactly which are | ||
| + | beneficial and which are harmful. Pg 163 | ||
| + | |||
| + | ---1747, Jean Antoine Nollet, a French abbot and physics tutor, was informed by a German physicist in Wittenberg that | ||
| + | water, which normally issued drop by drop from a capillary tube, would | ||
| + | run out in a constant stream if the tube was electrified. Nollet put several plants in metallic pots next to a conductor and was intrigued to note that the rate of their transpiration | ||
| + | increased. In a long series of experiments, | ||
| + | only daffodils but sparrows, pigeons, and cats** and found they **lost weight | ||
| + | faster if electrified**. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ---Italian physicist, Giuseppe Toaldo reported that in a row of jasmine bushes the two which were next to a lightning conductor grew thirty feet tall whereas all the | ||
| + | others attained only four feet. Pg 168 | ||
| + | |||
| + | ---Bertholon, | ||
| + | an electrified watering can. He reported that his salads grew to an | ||
| + | extraordinary size. He also invented what he called an **" | ||
| + | it through plants growing in a field. "This instrument is | ||
| + | applicable to all kinds of vegetal production, everywhere, in all weather.” | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | --As it had been known that sharp points | ||
| + | were especially attractive to atmospheric electricity, | ||
| + | that "**the sharp points of plants acted like lightning rods to collect | ||
| + | atmospheric electricity** and facilitate the exchange of charges of the air | ||
| + | and the ground." | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | ---London Journal of the Horticultural Society published the " | ||
| + | garden plots, and, tried burying them under the soil. But of | ||
| + | Solly' | ||
| + | only nineteen were of any benefit, and nearly as many were harmful. | ||
| + | The conflicting results of these researchers made it obvious that the | ||
| + | amount, quality, and duration of electrical stimulation was of crucial | ||
| + | importance to each form of vegetal life. Pg 174 | ||
| + | |||
| + | ---Lemstrom connected a series of flowers in metal pots to a static generator by an overhead network of wires sixteen inches above them and a | ||
| + | pole set into the soil as a ground. Other pots he "left to nature." | ||
| + | eight weeks, the electrified plants, showed gains in weight of nearly 50 | ||
| + | percent over their electrically deprived neighbors. When he transferred | ||
| + | his apparatus into a garden he not only more than doubled the yield of | ||
| + | strawberries but found them to be much sweeter; his harvest from barley | ||
| + | plants increased by one-third. He reported | ||
| + | Agriculture and Horticulture**// | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | ----------------------------- | ||
| + | === related libarynth topics === | ||
| + | * [[plant perception]] | ||
| + | * [[plant movement]] | ||
| + | * [[HPI]] | ||
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