Plant perception (paranormal)

This article is about theories regarding paranormal emotion and perception in plants. For the physiology of normal perception in multicellular plants, see Plant perception (physiology).

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose in his laboratory

Plant perception or biocommunication is the paranormal idea that plants are sentient, that they respond to humans in a manner that amounts to ESP, and that they experience pain and fear. The idea was not accepted, as plants lack a nervous system. This idea is distinct from measured plant perception and chemical communication.

Early research

The notion that plants are capable of feeling emotions was first recorded in 1848, when Dr. Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German experimental psychologist, suggested that plants are capable of emotions and that one could promote healthy growth with talk, attention, attitude, and affection.

Bengali scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, began to conduct experiments on plants in the year 1900. He found that every plant and every part of a plant appeared to have a sensitive nervous system and responded to shock by a spasm just as an animal muscle does. In addition Bose found that plants grew more quickly amidst pleasant music and more slowly amidst loud noise or harsh sounds. He also claimed that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc.," from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances. According to him, a plant treated with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared to a plant subjected to torture.

One visitor to his laboratory, the vegetarian playwright George Bernard Shaw, was intensely disturbed upon witnessing a demonstration in which a cabbage had "convulsions" as it boiled to death. Bose found that the effect of manures, drugs, and poisons could be determined within minutes, providing plant control with a new precision. He repeated his tests on metals, administering poisons to tin, zinc, and platinum, and obtained astonishing responses which, when plotted on a graph, appeared precisely like those of poisoned animals. In conclusion he said: "Do not these records tell us of some property of matter common and persistent? That there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and continuous march of law?"

Cleve Backster

In the 1960s Cleve Backster, an interrogation specialist with the CIA, conducted research that led him to believe that plants can communicate with other lifeforms. Backster's interest in the subject began in February 1966 when he tried to measure the rate at which water rises from a philodendron's root into its leaves. Because a polygraph or 'lie detector' can measure electrical resistance, which would alter when the plant was watered, he attached a polygraph to one of the plant's leaves. Backster stated that, to his immense surprise, "the tracing began to show a pattern typical of the response you get when you subject a human to emotional stimulation of short duration".

In 1975, K. A. Horowitz, D. C. Lewis and E. L. Gasteiger published an article in Science giving their results when repeating one of Backster's effects - plant response to the killing of brine shrimp in boiling water. The researchers grounded the plants to reduce electrical interference and rinsed them to remove dust particles. As a control three of five pipettes contained brine shrimp while the remaining two only had water: the pipettes were delivered to the boiling water at random. This investigation used a total of 60 brine shrimp deliveries to boiling water while Backster's had used 13. Positive correlations did not occur at a rate great enough to be considered statistically significant. Other controlled experiments that attempted to replicate Backster's findings have also produced negative results.

John Kmetz noted that Backster had not used proper controls in his experiments. When controls were used, no plant reactions to thoughts or threats were observed.

Puthoff and Fontes

In November 1975 a report called "Organic Biofield Sensor" reviewed research by Harold E. Puthoff and Randall Fontes at Stanford Research Institute investigating possibility that plants may respond to human consciousness as contended by Cleve Backster.

Mythbusters

The television show MythBusters performed an experiment (Season 4, Episode 18, 2006) to verify or disprove the concept. The tests were done by connecting plants to a polygraph galvanometer and employing actual and imagined harm upon the plants or upon others in the plant's vicinity. The galvanometer showed some kind of reaction about one third of the time. The experimenters, who were in the room with the plant, posited that the vibrations of their actions or the room itself could have affected the polygraph. After isolating the plant the polygraph showed a response slightly less than one third of the time. Later experiments with an EEG failed to detect anything. When the presenters dropped eggs randomly into boiling water, the plant had no reaction whatsoever, and the show concluded that the results were not repeatable, and that the theory was not true.

Cultural references

• The story "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" by Algernon Blackwood greatly concerns the consciousness of plants (specifically trees). In the story, trees can form a connection with people who appreciate them and long for them.
• Will Eisner wrote a graphic novel entitled Life on Another Planet that uses Backster's ideas as one of the main plot devices. A long description of Backster's life and thoughts appear in the comic as a letter read by one of the characters. The letter is included in the comic as a full page of text.
• English author Roald Dahl wrote a short story entitled The Sound Machine dealing with the theory, in which the protagonist develops a machine that enables him to hear the sound of plants, especially when they are under pain. With the machine he hears the scream of roses being cut, and the moan of a tree when he strikes it with an axe.
• The show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction (SEASON 4 EPISODE 8) featured a story about homicide detectives catching the man who murdered a florist by hooking a red Amaryllis, which was present during the murder, to a lie detector and performing a criminal line up looking for responses in the flower to each suspect. The show purports the story is true and happened in New York City in the late 1970s. They cite research by author/novelist Robert Tralins.
• Stevie Wonder sang of Bose's findings in the song "Same Old Story" on the Secret Life of Plants soundtrack album for the movie of the same name. The lyrics are as follows: "for most felt it was mad to conceive/that plants thought, felt, and moved quite like we/but with instruments Bose would devise/would take science itself by surprise." The song also includes references to George Washington Carver and his advocacy of crop rotation.
• Daniel Chamovitz's 2012 book, What a Plant Knows, reevaluates plant senses, including Bose's work, from a scientific perspective.

See also

• FernGully: The Last Rainforest
• Plant rights
• The Secret Life of Plants
• Harold Saxton Burr
• List of parapsychology topics

Bibliography

• The Reader's Digest, Wonders of the Natural World, The Reader's Digest Association Ltd., 1975
• Stone, Robert The Secret Life of Your Cells, Whitford Press, 1994
• Jensen, D., The Plants Respond: An Interview with Cleve Backster, 2006, [3], Accessed 30 Nov 2006
• Horowitz, K.A., Lewis, D.C, and Gasteiger, E.L. Plant 'Primary Perception': Electrophysiological Unresponsiveness to Brine Shrimp Killing, Science, New Series, Vol. 189, No. 4201 (Aug 8, 1975), pp. 478–480
• Carey, S.S. A Beginner's Guide to Scientific Method - Third Edition, Thomson-Wadsworth, 2004
• Carroll, R.T. Plant Perception (a.k.a. The Backster Effect), 2005, [4], Accessed 30 Nov 2006
• Tortora, Gerard J. Principles of Human Anatomy - Tenth Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.

External links

• Plant Perception at the Skeptic's Dictionary