Can People `Talk´ With Plants?

Is it possible that we are entering a phase of ideal cooperation with the plant world around us?

Every period in history brings a new fashion, nearly like show business. Physics had phases of delight with quantum theory, superstrings, gravity, chaos theory, and biochemistry with everything, and in one phase a substance called – pheromones. With insects it was determined that their behaviour was significantly determined by these compounds, even to that level that males of some species can attract females from a distance of ten kilometres, and this is why the secrete certain pheromones. These chemical “signals” are distributed in those that are responsible for alarm, sexual attraction and the ability to find food, and in general, it seems that all of life of earth could depend on the communication via these molecules. This places the idea of free will in question. Even though for various species, and finally for people, it has not been confirmed that the are pre-determined to that level by bodily secretions, it is a public secret that perfume manufacturers have at one time experimented with extracts from vaginal secretions, in order for their biochemical characteristics to attract a partner!

Scientists have known from before that plants in laboratories, unlike those in nature, secrete a certain chemical for reducing pain that is similar to aspirin – methyl salicylate. It has been suspected for a while that the reason for this is stress, which means that the plants have some sort of conscience. This would confirm the still criticized claim of the American expert for lie detectors, Clive Baxter. To remind ourselves: he surprised the scientific world when he demonstrated that it is possible to frighten a plant only with bad intent, when for example, we bring a lit match towards it. Instruments clearly showed a sort of panic that the plant showed at moments when it was subject to serious stress.

The latest research by the investigation group National Center for Atmospheric Research from Boulder, Colorado, who placed measuring instruments on walnut trees in the Californian city of Davis, showed that trees secrete the same chemical compound when they are under stress caused by unexpected coldness at night, or sudden climate change.

Dr Alex Guenther, a member of an investigative team that published their discovery in the magazine “Biogeosciences” with the suggestion that plants have some sort of consciousness, says that: “Methyl salicylate has two functions: prompting a process that is similar to immune system reactions in animals, which helps plants to recover, and also works as a means for warning other surrounding trees of danger…”. The head of the whole research Dr Thomas Karl goes a step further and says that this is solid evidence that plants communicate with each other, and that some substances are secreted only as an early sign of illness of threat, which could be used by farmers, which by measuring this can see danger for their plantations in the phase whilst it is not visible in any other way. Revolutionary research could be in question for ecology.

We can say that you can talk to plants. They can in a sense “hear” you.

Is it possible that we are entering a phase of ideal communication with the plant world around us?

The idea itself it known in the history of mystics. Indian shamans have always claimed that they can “talk with the trees because it has its own Manitou (spirit)”. Some South-American curanderos claim that plants communicate their characteristics, or show the illnesses that they can heal. Later some will claim that various forms of leaves or trees are in question that are reminiscent of internal organs. Those who were braver believed that a pheromone of plants was in question, that people are capable of feeling or recognizing at some level as a redundant message.

The second half of the 20th century brings delight with hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline or psilocybin, and enthusiasts claim that certain plants are a sort of guru to people. There have been more and more reports about exciting views into a “parallel reality”, a whole world that allegedly exists in other dimensions around us but that we do not see it. The prolonged use of these drugs, however, destroys the psyche of the experimenter, so the romantic vision of hallucinations is taken with large reserve. However, the stance that put forward by the Harvard professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, that people need hallucinogens in order to see what they call the “whole reality”. They even called them cerebral vitamins. With time they entered religious discussions and that point of view, and wrote comments on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, trying to prove that all faiths were created as a consequence of using hallucinogens. Whilst those claims were not proven even loosely, today the communication of plants and people is considered to be almost certain.