Psst! Your plant is listening! Why can't the government give farmers Beethoven instead of fertilizer?

by Palita P. Subasinghe

The relationship between plants and human beings is not a new phenomenon. It has been known from periods as far back as 4000 BC with historical evidence of tree worship and gods and goddesses believed to be dwelling in trees.

Before the rise of Christianity, nature and especially trees, were widely worshiped in many different cultures and times. In the worship of Apollo, the priests of ancient Greece purified themselves at length before venturing to a sacred oak grove and calling out questions.

According to legend, the trees answered back in human voices. The Celts and their shamans, the Druids, considered every oak tree to be endowed with sacred powers.

Even in Christian times, we have such legendary figures as St. Francis and Hildegard of Bingen speaking of plants and trees as divine wonders.

Some 2500 years ago the Buddha described a forest full of trees as a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously its products.

However, scientific interest on the extraordinary power of plants began as a result of a casual experiment conducted in 1966 by an American electronics engineer Clive Backster.

Secret killer

To see if a plant could display memory, a scheme was devised whereby Backster would identify the secret killer of one of two plants. He selected six of his students, who, blindfolded, drew from a hat, folded slips of paper on one of which were instructions to remove from the pot, stamp-on and thoroughly destroy one of two plants in a room.

This was carried out in secret where only the "killer" knew of the secret and only the second plant was a witness. Backster attached a polygraph (an electronic device used on suspected criminals for the detection of lies) to the remaining plant and paraded the students one by one before the plant.

The plant showed no reaction to five of the students but showed a violent reaction every time the "killer" entered the room!

Once when a close friend of Backster entered the room, all his plants connected to polygraphs went "dead" showing no response to anything that he did. Curious to know what could have influenced the plants to behave this way, he asked his friend whether any part of her work involved plants. The friend replied, "I terminate the plants I work with. I put them in the oven to obtain the dry weight for my analysis."

Forty-five minutes after the person left, all of Backster's plants started responding once again. This experience made him realize that plants could intentionally be put into a faint or be mesmerized by humans.

Marcel Vogel of the IBM Company, another scientist who conducted extensive research with plants asked one of his friends, a clinical psychologist, who had come to see if there was any truth in the plant research Vogel was conducting, to project a strong emotion to a philodendron plant fifteen feet away.

The plant surged into an instantaneous and intense reaction and then, suddenly, 'went dead'. When Vogel asked the psychologist what had gone through his mind, the man answered that he had mentally compared Vogel's plant with his own philodendron at home, and thought how inferior Vogel's was, to his. The 'feelings' of Vogel's plant were evidently so badly hurt that it refused to respond for the rest of the day; in fact, it sulked for two weeks thereafter.

Extremely sensitive

After a series of experiments with plants Vogel declared unequivocally that "It is fact: man can and does communicate with plants. Plants are living objects, sensitive, rooted in space. They may be blind, deaf, and dumb in the human sense, but there is no doubt in my mind that they are extremely sensitive instruments for measuring man's emotions.

They radiate energy, forces that are beneficial to man. One can feel these forces! They feed into one's own force-field which in turn feeds back energy to the plant".

Closer to home, Dr. T. C. Singh, head of the Department of Botany at Annamalai University, South of Chennai was another scientist who was interested in the behaviour of plants. He was successful in demonstrating how plants reacted positively to classical music played near their vicinity. He managed to obtain 25-60 % increase in yield from different varieties of rice by playing Charukesi Raga in the field.

Mrs. Dorothy Retallack of USA, required to devise an experiment for a college biology class and having heard about the positive effects of Bach and Beethoven on a wheat field in Canada, sought to determine how music would affect growth patterns in plants.

The plants placed in a controlled environment reacted favourably, growing faster and more abundantly, to the harmonic strains of the classical composers - in some cases actually growing in the direction of the music.

Highly percussive sounds, however, especially the 'hard Rock' of Jimi Hendrix and the like, stunted them in their growth and they often leaned away from the hi-fi speaker. The most appealing music, on the other hand, was not Western music, but rather the soothing tones of Ravi Shankar's Sitar. In some cases the plants inclined an unprecedented sixty degrees to the horizontal in an effort to merge with the musical source.

Going by these facts, the Buddhist religious practice of conducting bodhi poojas (religious offerings and recitations) at the bodhi trees (Ficus religiosa) may invariably have a scientific meaning. So too the Christmas tree, which modern society has relegated only for the purpose of hanging gifts at Christmas time.

Thus, it is obvious, that there is a strong relationship or bond between man and plants. It is well worth noting that, we, as those interested in horticulture and gardening in general should always be alive to this fact and treat our plants with a lot of TLC (tender loving care)!

The writer is Vice - President and Hony. Editor of the Horticultural and Flora Conservation Society, Sri Lanka.