Are plants intelligent? While visiting a friend in Australia many years ago, I was invited to see a large marijuana growing operation which used hydroponics and halogen lights. The garden was in a large room and the pants were arranged in neat rows. On one side of the room the plants seemed taller and fuller, gradually diminishing as they were positioned away from one particular corner. I mentioned the obvious difference to the owner of the operation and he explained that the corner with the most productive plants was where he had his stereo.
Curious, I asked him what kind of music the plants liked. He told me they preferred mostly classical but that he had recently had better results with recordings of crickets.
According to the gardener, crickets usually chirp right before a rain. He theorized that the sound tricked the plants to open their stomata's, the breathing pores on the underside of the leaves, and he gave them a mist containing Miracle-grow which they readily absorbed.
Can plants actually hear sound? This was the conclusion of Cleve Backster back in the 1960s. He's the former CIA interrogation specialist that connected polygraph sensors to plants and discovered that they reacted to harm (i.e. cutting their leaves) and even to harmful thoughts of humans in proximity to them.
Backster decided on impulse to attach his polygraph electrodes to the now-famous dracaena in his office, then water the plant and see if the leaves responded. Finding that the plant indeed reacted to this event, he decided to see what would happen if he threatened it, and formed in his mind the idea of lighting a match to the leaf where the electrodes were attached.
And that was when something happened that forever changed Baxter's life and ours. For the plant didn't wait for him to light the match. It reacted to his thoughts!
More at:
Do plants have feelings? The amazing life of plants.
Curious, I asked him what kind of music the plants liked. He told me they preferred mostly classical but that he had recently had better results with recordings of crickets.
According to the gardener, crickets usually chirp right before a rain. He theorized that the sound tricked the plants to open their stomata's, the breathing pores on the underside of the leaves, and he gave them a mist containing Miracle-grow which they readily absorbed.
Can plants actually hear sound? This was the conclusion of Cleve Backster back in the 1960s. He's the former CIA interrogation specialist that connected polygraph sensors to plants and discovered that they reacted to harm (i.e. cutting their leaves) and even to harmful thoughts of humans in proximity to them.
Backster decided on impulse to attach his polygraph electrodes to the now-famous dracaena in his office, then water the plant and see if the leaves responded. Finding that the plant indeed reacted to this event, he decided to see what would happen if he threatened it, and formed in his mind the idea of lighting a match to the leaf where the electrodes were attached.
And that was when something happened that forever changed Baxter's life and ours. For the plant didn't wait for him to light the match. It reacted to his thoughts!
More at:
Do plants have feelings? The amazing life of plants.
