I have to admit I talk to my plants. I greet them in the morning. Hey how are you doing?
I think about my plants, and give them water judiciously. I know, all too well, how too much care, over-focus can make a plant shrivel and die.
I don't consider whether or not my plant hears me. I talk to it because it's a very real thing, an entity in my life that responds to what I do, or don't do.
I read about the a scientific investigation that's going on. It started back in 1914 when scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, using a forceps, pinched a carrot that was strapped to his examining table and attached to a machine. Bose noted that the machine registered "infinitesimal twitches, starts and tremors," and told the journalists who were writing a about this, "Thus can science reveal the feelings of even so solid a vegetable as the carrot."
Today, in a new book, "What a Plant Knows," by Daniel Chamovitz, (he runs the plant biology lab at Tel Aviv University), the idea of plant intelligence is dismissed as a scientifically useful idea. Chamovitz summed it up: "I don't really think hard-core scientists say that plants are sentient in the way that mammals are, but plant neurobiologists are challenging us to redefine for ourselves what we mean by sentient."
Hey ho, even so, this author admitted that he talks to his plants in his lab, explaining -- "Why? Why do people pray? Why do people talk to God?"
Though plants have yet to weigh in and answer this, I say, yes, plants are sentient -- plants reach to the light -- plants react and grow when you feed them -- plants tell you they're happy (or not happy), about where they're living.
Hey, I can't resist posting Barbara Harris and John Cullum, (my husband), in the Alan J. Lerner musical, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever." Talking to plants started the Psychiatrist, (John,) helping a girl (the heroine, Barbara), find out who she really was.
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5 comments:
Back when I had a slew of house-plants in the 60s, I remember there was a theory that plants that you talk to tend to thrive. The scientific "explanation" was the benefit of the extra carbon dioxide that you waft at them as you talk to them.
Not sure if talking to plants does anything for them, but I do believe that loving them does. How else can I explain the longevity of two large, hanging hoys plants that have been thriving since 1982? I bought them to cheer me up after my father died.
They have been moved from place to place more times than I can count and even survived life in 2 sealed cardboard boxes in the belly of an airplane from New York to California.
They have never received plant food and were transplanted from soil to perlite a number of years ago. They have lived under every type of lighting condition and continue to grow and even flower. All they receive is sunlight, water and love.
Great tribute blog on plants. I believe they
listen and have feelings. I talk to my one pot
of plants and given them water and love...they are thriving. Years ago, I read and heard that
playing soft music like Mozart helps your plants to grow and I believe this to be true.
Plants are a wonderful thing and should be treasured with loving care. kam
Everything that lives has feeling. To what extent is up to you. We cannot say for sure what exists and what does not without proof. So if it is not proven, the possibilities exist. FYI Em, the plant on the south window needs water. HE texted me. LOL
Plants do not have feelings. People who think they do are confusing sentience with sensitivity. Plants are sensitive to their environments in all sorts of amazing ways, but they are not sentient (subjectively aware). There is no good scientific evidence to believe otherwise.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/07/16/plants-cannot-think-and-remember-but-theres-nothing-stupid-about-them-theyre-shockingly-sophisticated/
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