The secret life of plants revisited

From Plants as sensitive agents

A recent discussion with Michael Theroux has triggered an incredible series of experiments designed to prove that vital currents do indeed flow through natural environments. Mr. Theroux has conducted a series of plant sensitivity experiments which have sufficiently stimulated my interest to produce a series of reports on the subject. These, I hope will best serve the qualitative sciences in establishing a new and more complete experimental method. I extend my deepest thanks to Borderlands journal, which I believe to be the most serious forum available in the scientific community today.

Do plants engage in dynamic conscious dialogue with the ground and other beings? Empirical discoveries made throughout the century by notables such as Bose, Hieronymus, De LaWarr, Backster, Lawrence, and others give adequate proof of this dialogue. We learn that plant tissues can be used and relied upon for establishing “objective” qualitative criteria. The remarkable sensitivity of plants to external conscious and auric influences is providing us all with a revolutionary new means of experimentation. This “objectivized” qualitative sensitivity becomes extremely important for those who wish the maintenance of pure qualitative approaches to experimental research.

The use of plant tissues as objective-subjective sensors becomes exceedingly important in dispelling the acrid dialogue between ourselves and quantitative analysts. Sensitive plant response allows the experimenter to recognize the continuity which exists between plant response and those of our innermost experience. We are thus provided with a means for objectivizing our deepest impressions and reactions to forces which lie in the auric domain.

PRELIMINARY

Plants evidence a state, a condition of consciousness, in which they engage in active dialogue with the world. You will discover what Dr. Bose first recognized, the complete correlation of plant responses with the permeating emotional and mental fluctuations which flood our world.

The equipment which is required for this sort of experimentation is simple, and readily available. Michael Theroux mentioned that he had secured several Biosensors from a local Radio Shack. He successfully employed these to monitor plant responses. The Biosensors sold at Radio Shack were obtained for an incredibly low price, and proved to be excellent monitors for use in plant studies of this kind. I was later informed that none other than Dr. Buryl Payne is the designer and patent holder for this wonderful circuit. Mr. Theroux mentioned that his experiments began when, with these devices as a “poor man’s polygraph”, he rediscovered the amazing sensitivity of plants to distant influences.

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From Sorry, vegans: Brussels sprouts like to live, too

In his new book, “Eating Animals,” the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous, oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets” to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like himself, avoiding all products derived from animals, including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “eternal Treblinka.”

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.

“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said.

Plants can’t run away from a threat but they can stand their ground. “They are very good at avoiding getting eaten,” said Linda Walling of the University of California, Riverside. “It’s an unusual situation where insects can overcome those defenses.” At the smallest nip to its leaves, specialized cells on the plant’s surface release chemicals to irritate the predator or sticky goo to entrap it. Genes in the plant’s DNA are activated to wage systemwide chemical warfare, the plant’s version of an immune response. We need terpenes, alkaloids, phenolics — let’s move.

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