The Secret life of Plants

The Secret Life of Plants: by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, 1973

reading_notes by Cocky_Eek

—At the beginning of the twentieth century Viennese biologist Raoul Francé put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, that plants move their bodies as freely, easily, and gracefully as the most skilled animal or human, and that the only reason we don't appreciate the fact is that plants do so at a much slower pace than humans.

—No plant is without movement; he describes a summer day with thousands of polyplike arms reaching from a peaceful arbor, trembling, quivering in their eagerness for new support for the heavy stalk that grows behind them. When the tendril, which sweeps a full circle in sixty-seven minutes, finds a perch, within twenty seconds it starts to curve around the object, and within the hour has wound itself so firmly it is hard to tear away. The tendril then curls itself like a corkscrew and in so doing raises the vine to itself.

—Plants, says Francé, are capable of intent- they can stretch toward, or seek out, what they want in ways as mysterious as the most fantastic creations of romance.

—the inhabitants of the pasture -or botane- appear to be able to perceive and to react to what is happening in their environment at a level of sophistication far surpassing that of humans.

—Some parasitical plants can recognize the slightest trace of the odor of their victim, and will overcome all obstacles to crawl in its direction.

—Plants seem to know which ants will steal their nectar, closing when these ants are about, opening only when there is enough dew on their stems to keep the ants from climbing. The more sophisticated acacia actually enlists the protective services of certain ants which it rewards with nectar in return for the ants' protection against other insects and herbivorous mammals.

— The ingenuity of plants in devising forms of construction far exceeds that of human engineers. Man-made structures cannot match the supply strength of the long hollow tubes that support fantastic weights against terrific storms…

—the orchid Trichoceros parviflorus will grow its petals to imitate the female of a species of fly so exactly that the male attempts to mate with it and in so doing pollinates the orchid…. night-blossoming flowers grow white the better to attract night moths and night-flying butterflies, emitting a stronger fragrance at dusk, ….the carrion lily develops the smell of rotting meat in areas where only flies abound, …. flowers which rely on the wind cross-pollinate the species do not waste energy on making themselves beautiful, fragrant or appealing to insects, but remain relatively unattractive.

——the leaves of the sunflower plant, Silphium laciniatum, accurately indicate the points of the compass. Indian licorice, or Arbrus precatorius, is so keenly sensitive to all forms of electrical and magnetic influences it is used as a weather plant. Botanists who first experimented with it in London's Kew Gardens found in it a means for predicting cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. So accurate are alpine flowers about the seasons, they know when spring is coming and bore their way up through lingering snowbanks, developing their own heat with which to melt the snow. France insists that plants are constantly observing and recording events and phenomena of which man-trapped in his anthropocentric view of the world, subjectively revealed to him through his five senses-knows nothing. Plants have beenfound to be able to distinguish between sounds inaudible to the human ear and color wavelengths such as infra- red and ultraviolet invisible to the human eye; they are specially sensitive to X-rays and to the high frequency of television.

— The most effective way to trigger in a human being a reaction strong enough to make the galvanometer jump is to threaten his or her well- being. Cleve Backster, America's foremost lie-detector decided to do just that to his plant; a Dracaena massangeana: he dunked a leaf in the cup of hot coffee perennially in his hand. There was no reaction to speak of on the meter. Backster studied the problem several minutes, then conceived a worse threat: he would burn the actual leaf to which the electrodes were attached. The instant he got the picture of flame in his mind, and before he could move for a match, there was a dramatic change in the tracing pattern on the graph in the form of a prolonged upward sweep of the recording pen. Backster had not moved, either toward the plant or toward the recording machine. Could the plant have been reading his mind?

—“Luminescence in Liquids and Solids and Their Practical Application” by Marcel Vogel. He developed a variety of new products: the red color seen on television screens; fluorescent crayons; tags for insecticides; a “black light” inspection kit to determine, from their urine, the secret trackways of rodents in cellars, sewers, and slums.

—Vogel found that some of the philodendrons he worked with responded faster, others more slowly, some very distinctly, others less distinctly, and that not only plants but their individual leaves had their own unique personality and individuality. Leaves with a large electrical resistance were especially difficult to work with; fleshy leaves with a high water content were the best. Plants appeared to go through phases of activity and inactivity, full of response at certain times of the day or days of the month, “sluggish” or “morose” at other times. To make sure that none of these recording effects was the result of faulty electroding, Vogel developed a mucilaginous substance composed of a solution of agar, with a thickener of karri gum, and salt. This paste he brushed onto the leaves before gently applying carefully polished one-by-one-and-a-half-inch stainless-steel electrodes. When the agar jelly hardened around the edges of the electronic pickups, it sealed their faces into a moist interior, virtually eliminating all the variability in signal output caused by pressure on leaves when clamped between ordi- nary electrodes. This system produced for Vogel a base line on the chart that Was perfectly straight, without oscillations.

—“How about sex?” To their surprise, the plant came to life, the pen recorder oscillating wildly on the chart. This led to speculation that talking of sex could stir up in the atmosphere some sort of sexual energy such as the “orgone” discovered and described by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, and that the ancient fertility rites in which humans had sexual intercourse in freshly seeded fields might indeed have stimulated plants to grow.

—electronics engineer L. George Lawrence believed that biological radiations transmitted by living things are best received by a biological medium. biological-type sensors are needed in order to intercept biological signals, applies particularly to communications from outer space. As he puts it: “Standard electronics are next to worthless here, since 'bio-signals' apparently reside outside of the known electromagnetic spectrum.”

—1920s the Russian histologist Alexander Gurwitsch and his 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. Four main questions, said Lawrence, were starting to attract serious attention: Could plants be integrated with electronic readouts to form major data sensors and transducers? Could they be trained to respond to the presence of selected objects and images? Were their alleged supersensory perceptions verifiable? Of the 350,000 plant species known to science, which were the most promising from the electronic point of view? Pg 56

“There are certain qualities here,” he wrote, “which do not enter into normal experimental situations. According to those experimenting in this area, it is necessary to have a 'green thumb' and, most important, a genuine love for plants.” Pg 57