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====== The Secret Life of Plants ======

**The Secret Life of Plants: by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, 1973**

[[reading_notes]] by [[Cocky_Eek]] //in progress//

==== Introduction ====
 
 <html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603591016/" title="Picture 5 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5150/5603591016_dd7d797391_s.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="Picture 5"></a></html>---At the beginning of the twentieth century Viennese biologist 
Raoul Francé put forth the idea, shocking to contemporary natural philosophers, that plants move their bodies as freely, easily, and gracefully as the most skilled animal or human, and 
that the only reason we don't appreciate the fact is that plants do so at 
a much slower pace than humans. 

---No plant is without movement; he describes a summer day with thousands of polyplike 
arms reaching from a peaceful arbor, trembling, quivering in their eagerness 
for new support for the heavy stalk that grows behind them. When 
the tendril, which sweeps a full circle in sixty-seven minutes, finds a 
perch, within twenty seconds it starts to curve around the object, and 
within the hour has wound itself so firmly it is hard to tear away. The 
tendril then curls itself like a corkscrew and in so doing raises the vine 
to itself. 

---Plants, says Francé, are capable of intent- they can stretch toward, or 
seek out, what they want in ways as mysterious as the most fantastic 
creations of romance. 

---the inhabitants of the pasture -or botane- appear to be **able to perceive and to 
react to what is happening in their environment at a level of sophistication** 
far surpassing that of humans. 

---Some parasitical plants can recognize the slightest trace of the **odor of their 
victim**, and will overcome all obstacles to crawl in its direction. 

---Plants seem to know which ants will steal their nectar, closing when 
these ants are about, opening only when there is enough dew on their 
stems to keep the ants from climbing. The more sophisticated acacia 
actually enlists the protective services of certain ants which it rewards 
with nectar in return for the ants' protection against other insects and 
herbivorous mammals. 

--- **The ingenuity of plants in devising forms of construction far exceeds 
that of human engineers**. Man-made structures cannot match the supply 
strength of the long hollow tubes that support fantastic weights against 
terrific storms...

---the orchid Trichoceros parviflorus will grow its petals to imitate the female 
of a species of fly so exactly that the male **attempts to mate with it** and 
in so doing pollinates the orchid.... night-blossoming 
flowers grow white the better to attract night moths and night-flying 
butterflies, emitting a **stronger fragrance at dusk**, ....the carrion lily 
develops the **smell of rotting meat** in areas where only flies abound, ....
flowers which rely on the wind cross-pollinate the species **do 
not waste energy on making themselves beautiful**, fragrant or appealing 
to insects, but remain relatively unattractive. 

------the leaves
of the sunflower plant, **Silphium laciniatum, accurately indicate 
the points of the compass**. Indian licorice, or Arbrus precatorius, is so 
keenly sensitive to all forms of electrical and magnetic influences it is 
used as a weather plant. Botanists who first experimented with it in 
London's Kew Gardens found in it a means for **predicting cyclones, 
hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.** 
So accurate are alpine flowers about the seasons, they know when 
spring is coming and bore their way up through lingering snowbanks, 
**developing their own heat with which to melt the snow.** 
France insists that plants are constantly observing and recording events 
and phenomena of which man-trapped in his anthropocentric view of 
the world, subjectively revealed to him through his five senses-knows 
nothing. 
Plants have beenfound to be able to distinguish between 
sounds inaudible to the human ear and color wavelengths such as infra- 
red and ultraviolet invisible to the human eye; they are specially sensitive 
to X-rays and to the high frequency of television.

--- The most effective way to trigger in a human being a reaction strong 
enough to make the galvanometer jump is to threaten his or her well- 
being. Cleve Backster, America's foremost lie-detector decided to do just that to his plant; a Dracaena massangeana: he dunked a leaf 
in the cup of hot coffee perennially in his hand. There 
was no reaction to speak of on the meter. Backster studied the problem 
several minutes, then conceived a worse threat: he would **burn the actual 
leaf to which the electrodes** were attached. The instant he got the 
picture of flame in his mind, and before he could move for a match, 
there was a dramatic change in the tracing pattern on the graph in the 
form of a prolonged upward sweep of the recording pen. Backster had 
not moved, either toward the plant or toward the recording machine. 
**Could the plant have been reading his mind**?

//
related libarynth topics:// 
  * [[plant perception]]
  * [[groworld HPI ii]]

-------------------------------




==== ESP, extrasensory perception ====
 

 

<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603665616/" title="Picture 20 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5183/5603665616_800acb1622.jpg" width="50" height="110" alt="Picture 20"></a></html>---"Luminescence in Liquids and Solids and Their Practical Application" by Marcel Vogel. He developed 
a variety of new products: the red color seen on television screens; 
fluorescent crayons; tags for insecticides; a "black light" inspection kit 
to determine, from their urine, the secret trackways of rodents in cellars, 
sewers, and slums.

---Vogel found that some of the philodendrons he worked with 
responded faster, others more slowly, some very distinctly, others less 
distinctly, and that not only plants but their **individual leaves had their 
own unique personality and individuality**. Leaves with a large electrical 
resistance were especially difficult to work with; **fleshy leaves with a high 
water content were the best**. Plants appeared to go through phases of 
activity and inactivity, full of response at certain times of the day or days 
of the month, "sluggish" or "morose" at other times. 
To make sure that none of these recording effects was the result of 
faulty electroding, Vogel developed a mucilaginous substance composed 
of a **solution of agar, with a thickener of karri gum, and salt**. This paste 
he brushed onto the leaves before gently applying carefully polished 
one-by-one-and-a-half-inch stainless-steel electrodes. When the agar 
jelly hardened around the edges of the electronic pickups, it sealed their 
faces into a moist interior, virtually eliminating all the variability in 
signal output caused by pressure on leaves when clamped between ordi- 
nary electrodes. This system produced for Vogel a base line on the chart 
that Was perfectly straight, without oscillations.

---"How about sex?" To their surprise, the plant came to life, the pen recorder 
oscillating wildly on the chart. This led to speculation that talking of sex 
could stir up in the atmosphere some sort of sexual energy such as the 
"orgone" discovered and described by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, and that the 
ancient fertility rites in which humans had **sexual intercourse in freshly 
seeded fields might indeed have stimulated plants to grow**.

---electronics engineer L. George Lawrence believed that biological radiations transmitted by living things are best received 
by a biological medium. biological-type sensors 
are needed in order to intercept biological signals, applies particularly to 
communications from outer space. As he puts it: "Standard electronics 
are next to worthless here, since 'bio-signals' apparently reside outside 
of the known electromagnetic spectrum." 

---1920s the Russian histologist Alexander Gurwitsch and his 
wife, proclaimed that all living cells produce an invisible radiation.


---1969. Lawrence; Four main questions, were starting to attract serious
attention: **Could plants be integrated with electronic readouts to form 
major data sensors and transducers? Could they be trained to respond
to the presence of selected objects and images? Were their alleged
supersensory perceptions verifiable? Of the 350,000 plant species known 
to science, which were the most promising from the electronic point of 
view**?  Pg 56

"There are certain qualities here," he wrote, 
"which do not enter into normal experimental situations. According to 
those experimenting in this area, it is necessary to have a 'green thumb' 
and, most important, a genuine love for plants."  Pg 57

----------------------

==== Latest Soviet Discoveries ====
 
<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603081691/" title="Picture 21 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5228/5603081691_bd6820b484.jpg" width="53" height="90" alt="Picture 21"></a></html>---film by Panishkin "Are Plants Sentient?"

---biologist Karamanov published "**The Application of Automation and Cybernetics to Plant Husbandry.**" He builded a.o. microthermistors, weight tensiometers, to register the temperature of plants, the flow rate of fluid in their stems
and leaves, the intensity of their transpiration, their growth rates, and 
characteristics of their radiation. He picked up detailed information on when and how much a plant wants to drink, whether it craves 
more nourishment or is too hot or cold. 

--He showed that an ordinary bean plant had acquired the equivalent of "hands" to signal an instrumental brain how much light it needed. When the brain sent "hands" signals, "they had only to press a switch, and the plant was thus 
afforded the capability of independently establishing the optimal length 
of its 'day' and 'night.' " Later, the same bean plant, having acquired 
the equivalent of "legs," was **able instrumentally to signal whenever it 
wanted water.** "Showing itself to be a fully rational being," the account 
continued, "it did not guzzle the water indiscriminately but limited 
itself to a two-minute drink each hour, thus regulating its water need 
with the help of an artificial mechanism.  Pg 67

---Beans, potatoes, wheat, and crowfoot  
after proper "instruction" seemed to have the capability of remembering the frequency of Hashes from a xenon-hydrogen lamp. The plants
repeated the pulsations with  "exceptional accuracy," and since crowfoot was able to repeat a given frequency after a pause as long as eighteen hours it was possible to speak of "**Long-term” memory in plants**. 
The scientists next went on, to condition a 
philodendron to recognize when a piece of mineralized rock was put 
beside it. Using the system developed by Pavlov with dogs, whereby he 
discovered the "conditioned reflex," the Kazakh scientists simultaneously "punished" a philodendron with an electrical shock each time a 
mineralized ore was placed next to it. They reported that, after condi- 
tioning, the same plant, anticipating the hurtful shock, would get "emo- 
tionally upset" whenever the block of ore was put beside it. Further- 
more, said the Kazakh scientists, the plant could distinguish between 
mineralized ore and a similar piece of barren rock containing no miner- 
als, a feat which might indicate that plants will one day be used in 
**geological prospecting.**  Pg 69

---V.n. Pushkin, psychological scientist surmised that **a hypnotized person should be able
to send emotions to a plant more directly** and spontaneously than a
person in a normal state. Hypnotizing a young girl by the name of
Tanya, who was described by Pushkin as of "lively temperament and
spontaneous emotionality," they first implanted in her the notion that
she was one of the most beautiful women in the world, then the notion 
that she was freezing in harsh raw weather. At each change in the girl's
mood the plant, which was attached to an encephalograph, responded
with an appropriate pattern on the graph. "We were able," says Pushkin "to get an electrical reaction as many times as we worked, even to
the most arbitrary commands.” 

---Pushkin and Fetisov decided to see whether **the plant could detect
a lie**, as Backster had claimed. It was suggested to Tanya that she thinks of a number from 1 to 10. At the same time she was told she would never 
reveal the number, even if pressed to do so. When the researchers 
counted slowly from I to 10, pausing after each digit to inquire whether 
it was the one she had thought of, each time Tanya responded with a 
decisive "No!" Though the psychologists could not see any difference 
in her answers, the plant gave a specific and clear reaction to her internal 
state when the number 5 was counted. It was the number which Tanya 
had selected and promised not to reveal.  Pg 71

---plants have memory. They are able 
to gather impressions and retain them over long periods. We had a man 
molest, even torture, a geranium for several days in a row. He pinched 
it, tore it, pricked its leaves with a needle, dripped acid on its living tissues, 
burned it with a lighted match, and cut its roots. Another man took 
tender care of the same geranium, watered it, worked its soil, sprayed it 
with fresh water, supported its heavy branches, and treated its burns and 
wounds. When we e1ectroded our instruments to the plant, what do you 
think? No sooner did **the torturer come near the plant than the recorder 
of the instrument began to go wild**. **The plant didn't just get "nervous"; 
it was afraid, it was horrified.** If it could have, it would have either thrown 
itself out the window or attacked its torturer. Hardly had this inquisitor 
left and the good man taken his place near the plant than the geranium 
was appeased, its impulses died down, the recorder traced out smooth- 
one might almost say tender-lines on the graph.  Pg 73

---In addition to a plant's ability to recognize friend and foe, Soviet 
researchers also noted that one plant supplied with water can somehow 
share it with a deprived neighbor. In one institute of research a cornstalk 
planted in a glass container was denied water for several weeks. Yet it 
did not die; it remained as healthy as other cornstalks planted in normal 
conditions nearby. In some way, **water was transferred from healthy plants to the "prisoner" in the jar**. Yet they have 
no idea how this was accomplished.  Pg 73

---As fantastic as this may seem, a kind of plant-to-plant transfer has 
been taking place in England in experiments begun in 1972 by Dr. 
A. R. Bailey. Two plants in an artificially lit greenhouse in which temper- 
ature, humidity, and light were carefully controlled were suffering from 
lack of water. Bailey and his collaborator measured the voltages gene- 
rated between two parts of both plants. When one plant was watered 
from the outside through plastic tubes, the other plant reacted. As Bailey 
told the British Society of Dowsers: "There was no electrical connection 
between them, no physical connection whatsoever, but **somehow one 
plant picked up what was going on with the other."**  Pg 74

---research of the American Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin in photo· 
synthesis, wherein he discovered that **plant chlorophyll under the influence of the sun's rays can give up electrons to a semiconductor such as 
zincoxide**. Melvin and his co-workers created a "green photoelement," 
which produced a current of approximately 0.1 microamperes per square 
centimeter. After several minutes, the plant 
chlorophyll becomes desensitized or "exhausted," but its life could be 
extended by the addition of** hydroquinone to the salt solution which acts 
as an electrolyte**. The chlorophyll seems to act as a kind of electron 
pump passing electrons from the hydroquinone to the semiconductor. 
Calvin has calculated that a chlorophyll photoelement with an area 
of ten square meters could yield a kilowatt of power. He has theorized 
that in the next quarter century such photoelements could be manufac· 
tured on an industrial scale and would be a hundred times cheaper than 
silicone solar batteries now being experimented with.  Pg 76 

//
related topic//  [[luminous:phoef]]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


==== Pioneers of Plant Mysteries ====


<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603665558/" title="Picture 19 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5107/5603665558_842f68afa0.jpg" width="55" height="49" alt="Picture 19"></a></html>---the Bengali Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose  in 1899 betook himself to his greengrocer and purchased a bag 
of carrots and turnips, which, of all vegetables, appeared to him the most 
stolidly nonsentient, and found them to be highly sensitive. When he 
chloroformed plants, Bose discovered that they were as successfully 
anesthetized as animals, and that when the narcotic vapor was blown 
away by fresh air like animals they revived. **Using chloroform to tranquilize a huge pine tree,** Bose was able to uproot it and transplant it without 
the usually fatal shock of such operations. Pg 87

---Since Bose knew that in plants there was respiration without gills or lungs, 
digestion without a stomach, and movements without muscles, it 
seemed plausible to him that there could be the same kind of excitation 
as in higher animals but without a complicated nervous system. 
Bose concluded that the only way to find out about the unseen 
changes which take place in plants and **tell if they were excited or 
depressed** would be to measure visually their responses to what he 
called "definite testing blows" or shocks. "In order to succeed in this, we have to discover some compulsive force which will make 
the plant give an answering signal. Secondly, we have to supply the 
means for an automatic conversion of these signals into an intelligent 
script. And, last of all, we have ourselves to learn the nature of these 
hieroglyphics."   Pg 92

---Bose was able to show how the skins 
of lizards, tortoises, and frogs as well as those of grapes, tomatoes behaved similarly. He found that the vegetal 
digestive organs in insectivorous plants, from the tentacle of a sundew 
to the hair-lined flap of a pitcher plant, were analogous to animal stom-
achs. He discovered close parallels between the response to light in 
leaves and in the retinas of animal eyes. With his magnifier he proved 
that plants become as fatigued by continuous stimulation as animal 
muscles, whether they were **hypersensitive mimosas or undemonstrative 
radishes**.

---Working with the **Desmodium gyrans, a species whose continuously 
oscillating leaves recall the motion of semaphore flags** and led to its 
common appellation, telegraph plant, Bose found that the poison which 
could stop its automatic ceaseless pulsation would also stop an animal 
heart and that the antidote for this poison could bring both organisms 
back to life. Pg 92

In Desmodium gyrans, or the telegraph plant, Bose found that if the 
cut end of a detached leaflet was dipped in water in a bent glass tube 
it r**ecovered from the shock of its amputation and began to pulsate anew**. 
Was this not like an excised animal heart which can be kept beating in 
Ringer's solution? Just as the heart stops beating when blood pressure 
is lowered and starts again when pressure is raised, Bose found the same 
was true for the pulsation of the Desmodium when the sap pressure was 
increased or decreased. 


--- One day Bose found 
that when all motion stopped in his plant, it suddenly shuddered in a 
way reminiscent of the death spasm in animals. To determine exactly 
the critical temperature at which death occurred, he invented a **moro- 
graph, or death recorder.** While many plants met their end at sixty 
degrees centigrade, individual plants exhibited variations depending on 
their previous histories and ages. If their power of resistance was artificially depressed by fatigue, or poison, the death spasm would take place 
with temperatures as low as twenty-three degrees Centigrade. At death, 
the plant threw off a huge electrical force. **Five hundred green peas 
could develop five hundred volts,** said Bose, **enough to fulminate a cook 
but for the fact that peas are seldom connected in series.** 
Though it had been thought that plants liked unlimited quantities of 
carbon dioxide, Bose found that too much of this gas could suffocate 
them, but that they could then be revived, just like animals, with oxygen. 
Like human beings, **plants became intoxicated when given shots of 
whiskey or gin,** swayed like any barroom drunkard, passed out, and 
eventually revived, with definite signs of a hangover. These findings 
together with hundreds of other data were published in two massive 
volumes in 1906 and 1907.  Pg 94

Boses invention the crescograph not only produced a ten-thousand-fold magnification of movement, 
far beyond the powers of the strongest microscope, but could automati- 
cally record the rate of growth of plants and their changes in a period 
as short as a minute.
Bose showed the remarkable fact that in countless plants, **growth proceeds in rhythmic pulses.** each pulse exhibiting' a
rapid uplift and then a slower partial recoil of about a fourth the distance 
gained. The pulses in Calcutta averaged about three per minute. By 
watching the progress of the movement on the chart Bose found that **growth in some plants could be retarded and even
halted by merely touching them, and that in others rough handling 
stimulated growth, especially if they were sluggish and morose.** Pg 99

---The roots of plants are called "geotropic," because they burrow into 
the soil. Leaves turn to light because they are "heliotropic" or "phototropic." Roots questing water are described as "hydrotropic," and those 
bending against the flow of a stream "rheatropic." The tendril's touch 
is known as its "thigmotropism." Pg 99.  
  
//
related libarynth topic: //  [[plant movement]]

---Bose now in retirement summud his scientific philosophy:
“Is there any possible relation between our own life and that of the plant 
world? The question is not one of speculation but of actual demonstration 
by some method that is unimpeachable. This means that we should 
abandon all our preconceptions, most of which are afterward found to be 
absolutely groundless and contrary to facts. The final appeal must be 
made to the plant itself and no evidence should be accepted unless **it bears 
the plant's own signature.** 
---------------

==== The Metamorphosis of Plants ====
<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603665460/" title="Picture 18 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/5603665460_73b35efe55.jpg" width="75" height="50" alt="Picture 18"></a></html>---Why botany, a potentially fascinating subject dealing with plants, living 
and extinct, their uses, classification, anatomy, physiology, geographical 
distribution, should have been from the beginning reduced to** a dull 
taxonomy, an endless Latin dirge**, in which progress is measured more 
by the number of corpses cataloged than by the number of blossoms 
cherished, is perhaps the greatest mystery in the study of plant life. Pg 104 

**The pollen of most plants has a highly inflammable character**; when 
thrown on a red-hot surface it will ignite as quickly as gunpowder. 
Artificial lightning was formerly produced on the theatrical stage by 
throwing the pollen grains of the Lycopodium or club mosses onto a hot 
shovel. In many plants the pollen diffuses an odor bearing the most 
striking resemblance to the seminal emission of animals and man. 
The spermatozoa of certain mosses carried in the morning dew in search of females, is guided by its taste for malic acid toward the delicate cups at the bottom of 
which lie moss eggs to be fertilized. **The spermatozoa of ferns**, on the 
other hand, liking sugar, **find their females in pools of sweetened water**. Pg 107

---For years Goethe had been distressed by the limitations involved in a merely analytical and 
intellectual approach to the plant world, typified by **the cataloging mind 
of the eighteenth century**, and of a theory of physics, then triumphant, 
which submitted the world to blind laws of mechanics, to a "jeu de 
rouages et de ressorts sans vie."
-------------------
==== Plants Will Grow to Please ====
<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603665318/" title="Picture 15 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5221/5603665318_63b05a2493.jpg" width="54" height="98" alt="Picture 15"></a></html>---Gustav Theodor Fechner (1839):  “Was it not one of the ultimate purposes of the human bodies to serve vegetal life, surrounding it by emitting carbon dioxide for the plants to breathe, and manuring them with human bodies after death? Did not flowers and 
trees finally consume man and, by combining his remains together with raw earth, water, air, and sunlight, transform and transmute human bodies into the most glorious forms and 
colors? 
----------



==== Tuned to the Music of the Spheres ====
//The Harmonics of  plants//
 
<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603081267/" title="Picture 14 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4097/5603081267_92481df2e3_s.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="Picture 14"></a></html>---In 1950 T. C. Singh, head of the department of botany at Annamalai University ,
began wondering whether sound, properly prescribed, could spur field crops to greater yields. From 1960 to 1963 he piped the "Charukesi raga" on a **gramophone via a loud- 
speaker to paddy rice growing in 
the fields** of seven villages on the Bay of Bengal, and got harvests ranging consistently from 
25 to 60 percent higher than the regional average. He also was able 
musically to provoke peanuts and chewing tobacco into producing nearly 
50 percent more than normal. Singh further reported that merely by 
dancing the "Bharata-Natyam," India's most ancient dance style, with- 
out musical accompaniment and executed by **girls without trinkets on their ankles, the growth of Michaelmas daisies, marigolds, and petunias 
was very much accelerated**, causing them to flower as much as a fort- 
night earlier than controls, presumably because of the rhythm of the 
footwork transmitted through the earth. 

--- 
In the mid-1960s two researchers at Canada's University of Ottawa, Mary 
Measures and Pearl Weinberger were conversant that ultrasonic frequencies markedly affect the germination and growth of 
barley, sunflower, spruce, Jack pine, Siberian pea tree, and other seeds 
and seedlings However, the very 
frequencies which stimulated some plant species inhibited others. They wondered whether specific audible frequencies in 
the sonic range would be as effective as music in enhancing the growth 
of wheat. 
In a series of experiments lasting more than four years, the two 
biologists exposed the grains and seedlings of spring Marquis and winter 
Rideau wheat to high-frequency vibrations. They found that, depending 
on how long the wheat seeds had been vernalized, **the plants responded 
best to a frequency of 5,000 cycles a second**. 

---1973 Dr. Weinberger said **basic farm equipment of the future will include an oscillator** for production 
of sound waves and a speaker." He set up large-scale tests to determine the practicability of their idea. 
they discovered that experimental "pink" noise, which, at 20 to 20,000 cycles per second and 100 decibels, sounds to the ear about the **same as the noise received 100 feet 
away from a 727 jet plane** about to take off, caused turnips to sprout much faster than those left silently in the ground. Pg 152

---Allotting one chamber for a control group, Mrs. Dorothy Retallack, a Danish professional organist and mezzo soprano in 1968 used the 
same plants, as in the first experiment, 
setting them in identical soil and affording them equal amounts of water 
on schedule. Trying to pinpoint the musical note most conducive to 
survival, each day she tried an **F note, played unremittingly for eight 
hours in one chamber** and three hours intermittently in another. In the 
first chamber her plants were **stone dead within two weeks**. In the 
second chamber, the plants were much healthier than controls left in 
silence. 

---The cucurbits were hardly indifferent to the two musical forms: those 
exposed to Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and other eighteenth- 
and nineteenth-century European scores g**rew toward the transistor 
radio**, one of them even twining itself lovingly around it. The other 
squashes grew away from the rock broadcasts and even tried to climb 
the slippery walls of their glass cage. Pg 154
The plants gave positive evidence of **liking Bach, since they leaned
an unprecedented thirty-five degrees toward the preludes**. But even this 
affirmation was far exceeded by their reaction to Shankar: in their 
straining to reach the source of the classical Indian music they bent 
more than halfway to the horizontal, at angles in excess of sixty degrees, 
**the nearest one almost embracing the speaker**. 


--------------------------
==== Plants and Electromagnetism ====
<html><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/5603665188/" title="Picture 13 by _foam, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5230/5603665188_f014029cea_s.jpg" width="50" height="50" alt="Picture 13"></a></html>---Just as plants respond to the wavelengths of music, so also are they 
continually being **affected by wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum**, from earth, moon, planets, cosmos and from a proliferation of 
man-made devices; only it remains to be established exactly which are 
beneficial and which are harmful. Pg 163

---1747, Jean Antoine Nollet, a French abbot and physics tutor, was informed by a German physicist in Wittenberg that 
water, which normally issued drop by drop from a capillary tube, would 
run out in a constant stream if the tube was electrified. Nollet put several plants in metallic pots next to a conductor and was intrigued to note that the rate of their transpiration 
increased. In a long series of experiments, Nollet carefully weighed **not 
only daffodils but sparrows, pigeons, and cats** and found they **lost weight 
faster if electrified**. 

---Italian physicist, Giuseppe Toaldo reported that in a row of jasmine bushes the two which were next to a lightning conductor grew thirty feet tall whereas all the 
others attained only four feet. Pg 168

---Bertholon, had a gardener stand on a slab of insulating material and sprinkle vegetables from 
an electrified watering can. He reported that his salads grew to an 
extraordinary size. He also invented what he called an **"electrovegetometer"** to collect atmospheric electricity by means ot an antenna, and pass 
it through plants growing in a field. "This instrument is 
applicable to all kinds of vegetal production, everywhere, in all weather.”



--As it had been known that sharp points 
were especially attractive to atmospheric electricity, Finish scientist Lemstrom reasoned 
that "**the sharp points of plants acted like lightning rods to collect 
atmospheric electricity** and facilitate the exchange of charges of the air 
and the ground."  Pg 175


---London Journal of the Horticultural Society published the "**Influence of Electricity on Vegetation**" by an agronomist, Edward Solly, who, suspended wires in the air over 
garden plots, and, tried burying them under the soil. But of 
Solly's seventy experiments with various grains, vegetables, and flowers, 
only nineteen were of any benefit, and nearly as many were harmful. 
The conflicting results of these researchers made it obvious that the 
amount, quality, and duration of electrical stimulation was of crucial 
importance to each form of vegetal life.  Pg 174

---Lemstrom connected a series of flowers in metal pots to a static generator by an overhead network of wires sixteen inches above them and a 
pole set into the soil as a ground. Other pots he "left to nature." After 
eight weeks, the electrified plants, showed gains in weight of nearly 50 
percent over their electrically deprived neighbors. When he transferred 
his apparatus into a garden he not only more than doubled the yield of 
strawberries but found them to be much sweeter; his harvest from barley 
plants increased by one-third. He reported  his success in 1902 in a book //Electro Cultur// The English translation of Lemstrom's book, entitled //**Electricity in 
Agriculture and Horticulture**//.  Pg 176
---------------------------
==== Force Fields, Humans and Plants ====
 
--- engineers, unlike 
researchers in pure science, are less concerned with why or how something works than with whether it will work. This attitude can free them
from the shackles of theory, which in the history of science has often 
caused pedants to disregard the brilliant new findings of geniuses be- 
cause there was no theoretical basis to support them. pg 178

---Dr. George Starr White, pubished //Cosmoelectric Culture//, discovered that metals like iron and tin could facilitate 
plant growth if bright pieces were dangled from fruit trees.Where Hay attached metallic **Christmas tree 
balls to tomato plants**, they would bear their fruits earlier than normal. pg 180

---electronic engineer James Lee Scribner believes that: it is the electron that is responsible before the photosynthesis can take 
place, for it is the electron that magnetizes the chlorophyll in the plant 
cell that makes it possible for the photon to assert itself and become a 
part of the plant in the form of solar energy. It is also this magnetism that 
draws the molecules of oxygen into the ever expanding chlorophyll cells 
of the plant, and so we must assume that moisture is in no way integrated into the plant through any absorption process whatsoever, for the integration of moisture is purely an electronic one. The so-called root pressure 
(moisture droplets) appearing on plant surfaces is not root pressure at all, 
but an abundance of electrons working with the rather excessive water 
energy in the bed. pg 181


---Because, of all living things, they seemed the most enduring and the 
least moble, Burr charted the life fields of trees over nearly two decades.
He found that recordings related not only to the lunar cycle and to 
sunspots, whIch flare up at intervals with many years between them, but 
revealed cycles recurring every three and six months that were beyond 
his explanabon. His conclusions seemed to make less suspect the long- 
mocked practices of generations of gardeners who claimed that their 
**crops** should be **planted according to the phases of the moon**.pg 197

---To try to establish the cosmic origin of energy, Lakhovsky decided 
to dispense with his device to produce artificial rays 
and tap natural energy from space. In January, 1925, he picked one of 
a series of geraniums previously inoculated with cancer and surrounded 
it with a circular copper spiral thirty centimeters in diameter, its two 
unjoined ends fixed in an ebonite support. After several weeks he found 
that whereas all the control geraniums inoculated with cancer had died 
and dried up, the plant ringed with the copper spiral was not only 
radiantly healthy but had grown twice as high as uninoculated controls. 
These spectacular results led Lakhovsky into a complex theory as to how the geranium had been able to pick up from the vast field of waves 
in the external atmosphere the **exact frequencies which enabled its cells 
to oscillate normally and so powerfully that the cancer-afflicted cells 
were destroyed.** pg 185

---Other first and second colonies of cells, separated by the quartz glass, 
both perished when only the first colony was murdered with chemical 
poisons or lethal radiation and the second left unexposed. What killed 
the second colony in each case? 
Since **ordinary glass does not permit ultraviolet rays to pass but quartz 
glass does**, it seemed to the Soviet scientists that here was a key to the 
mystery. They recalled that **Gurwitsch had theorized that onion cells 
could emit ultraviolet rays**, and they resurrected his ideas from the limbo 
to which they had been consigned in the 1930s. They found that when life processes in the tissue cultures remained 
//normal//, the ultraviolet glow, invisible to the human eye but detectable 
as oscillations on the tape, remained stable. As soon as the affected 
colony began to battle against its infection, the radiation intensified. 
Reports on this work in Moscow newspapers disclosed that, however 
fantastic it might seem, the **ultraviolet radiation from the afflicted cells 
//carried information// encoded in the fluctuation in intensity which was 
somehow received by the second colony**. 
Since the second colony seemed in each case to die in exactly the same 
way as the first, the Soviets realized that it was as dangerous for healthy 
cells to be exposed to the transmitted signal of dying cells as it was for 
them to be exposed to viruses, poisons, and lethal radiation. It appeared 
that the second colony upon receiving the alarm signal from the dying 
first colony began to mobilize for resistance and its very "restructuring for war" against a nonexistent enemy proved as fatal as if it had 
it had indeed been attacked. pg 189-199

------------------------


==== The Mystery of Plant and Human Auras ====
 

 ---Inyushin had written up his research 
into the Kirlians' work in 1968 in a book-long scientific paper: //The 
Biologlcal Essence of the Kirlian Effect//. Though Kirlian himself had 
maintained that the strange energy in his pictures was caused by "changinng the nonelectrical properties of bodies into electrical properties which 
are transferred to film," Inyushin and his collaborators went several steps 
further. They declared that the **bioluminescence visible in Kirlian pictures** was caused not by the electrical state of the organism but by a 
**"biological plasma body"** which seemed to be only a new word for the 
"etheric" or "astral" body of the ancients. pg 203
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography]] (Kirlian technique is used in the industry to scan vegetables if they are fresh or not.

--- Viktor Adamenko and other Soviet scientists had been able to determine that the **"bioplasma"** 
not only undergoes a drastic shift when placed in a magnetic field but 
is concentrated at hundreds of points in the human body which seem 
to **correspond to the ancient Chinese system of acupuncture points.**pg 205

---If there is a change in the 
universe and environment, say the parapsychologists, a resonance is 
produced in the vital energy of the human body which in turn affects 
the physical body. It is **through his bioplasmic body** that parapsycholo- 
gists believe **a man can be in direct contact with a living plant.** pg 206

---The mystery of the link between human emotional or psycic states 
and emanations radiating from the fingertips is deepened by Moss,s 
finding that pictures done with Kirlian techniques of both her own and Kendall Johnson's 
fingers differ from day to day and hour to hour. 
Since the photos of leaves change with variations in parameters, Moss 
conjectures that "**at whatever frequency we take a picture, we are reso- 
nating, or vibrating at the same frequency,** with one particular aspect of 
the material; thus, not a whole picture, but different pieces of informa- 
tion are picked up." [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography]] pg 208

---Kirlian photos of faith healers reveal a smaller glow after healing, while 
those healed have greater emanations, indicating some sort of energy 
flow from the hands of the healer into the body of the patient, giving 
substance to **Galvani's and Mesmer's theory of "animal magnetism."**

--------------------
==== Chemicals, Plants and Man ====


---**Pfeiffer** had developed in his 
native Switzerland a "**sensitivity crystallization method"** to test finer 
dynamic forces and qualities in plants, animals, and humans than had 
thus far been detectable in laboratories. Dr. Steiner asked Pfeiffer to find a reagent which would reveal"etheric formative forces" in living matter. After months of tests with Glauber's salt, or sodium sulfate, and many other chemicals, 
Pfeiffer discovered that if a solution of copper chloride to which extracts 
of living matter had been added was allowed to evaporate slowly over,
fourteen to seventeen hours it would produce a **crystallization pattern 
determined not only by the nature but by the quality of the plant** from 
which the extract was taken. Pfeiffer developed an even simpler and less time
consuming method to demonstrate how life veritably pulsates from 
living soils, plants, and foods, but not from inorganic minerals, chemicals, and synthetic vitamins, which are dead. Requiring none of the 
complex equipment of the standard chemical laboratory, it uses circular 
filter-paper discs fifteen centimeters in diameter, provided with a small 
hole in the center for insertion of a wick. The discs are laid in open petri 
dishes in which stand small crucibles containing a 0,05 silver-nitrate 
solution. This solution climbs up through the wick and spreads over the 
discs until it has expanded about four centimeters from the center. 
From the brilliant-colored concentric patterns Pfeiffer has been able to disclose new secrets of life. 

Pfeiffer laboratory has series of beautiful crystallizations, looking like exotic undersea corals. A strong, 
vigorous plant produces a beautiful, harmonious, and clearly formed 
crystal arrangement radiating through to the outer edge. The same 
crystallization made from a weak or sick plant results in an uneven 
picture showing thickening or incrustation.pg 244

------------
==== Live Plants or dead Planets ====

---Pfeiffer came to realize that it is only our human egotistical point of 
view that labels a weed a weed, and that if they were viewed as a 
functioning part of nature, weeds would have much to teach. Pfeiffer 
proved that a whole group of weeds, including sorrels, docks, and 
horsetails, are sure indicators that the soil is becoming too acidic. Dande- 
lions, which lawn owners so feverishly dig up; actually heal the soil by 
transporting minerals, especially calcium, upward from deep layers, even 
from underneath hardpan. The dandelion is thus warning the lawn 
owner that something is wrong with the life of his soil. Pfeiffer came to the conclusion that, 
when soil lacks lime, silicon-loving plants such as daisies move onto it. 
When they die, they bring to the soil the missing calcium.  pg 264

---with **Pfeiffer's chromatograms** established scientific proof that certain plants 
beans and cucumbers, for instance 
grow better if planted in coniunction with each other,  and other plants, such  pg 263as beans and fennel, seem 
to fare badly together. realted [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companion_planting]]

---The New Alchemists say: "To Restore 
the Lands, Protect the Seas, and Inform the Earth's Stewards." This is 
what the planet's vegetal covering on terra firma has been doing since 
long before the advent of man to his stewardship. In that sense, **//plants 
are the oldest alchemists.//** 
---------

==== Alchemists in the Garden ====

---Tillandsia, or** Spanish moss 
can grow on copper wires** without any
contact with the soil.

---Kervran (1901-1983) medical scientist and engineer: 
powerful energies are at work in the germination process of seeds which 
synthesize enzymes, probably by transmuting matter within them. His 
experiments have also convinced him that **lunar forces are extremely 
important in germination**, though botanists have long asserted that only 
warmth and water are required. 



-----------------------------

=== related libarynth topics ===
  * [[plant perception]]
  * [[plant movement]]
  * [[HPI]]