Talking to Plants

Years ago, I saw a documentary, I think it was on The Nature of Things, where a room full of potted trees were hooked up to polygraphs, and changes in what I assume were the plants' "electrodermal activity" (if you can measure that on a plant) were recorded. Apparently, if you take a lighter and threaten one plant in the room with it, all the other plants in the room send out signals of agitation on their polygraph recordings, and the reaction spreads throughout the room from the initial "upset" plant. After a quick internet search, it seems that all of this started after a preliminary test by Cleve Backster.

Recently, The National Geographic Society published an article on how plants recognise siblings, and will not compete with them for shared soil as aggressively as they would with unrelated plants. The article goes so far to say that "plants, though lacking cognition and memory, are capable of complex social interactions."

A lot of people talk to their plants and swear that comforting words can ease an ailing eater of photons. Many cults and religions hold trees in high spiritual regard.

So before this turns into something all tree-huggy, I should get to the point of this post.

Earlier today, I had a freaky experience. A friend of mine was had a set of divining rods, and was reading the energies (positive or negative) of all sorts of objects, including bottles of vitamins and me. I had never actually seen divining rods except on TV, and had to try these things. The most surprising thing, is that the damn things actually move on their own. I can't explain it. As I walked around the room, querying the benign-ness or malignancy of a coffee mug, other bottles of vitamins and a bookshelf, the owner of said divining rods told me to ask the plants if they were thirsty. The rods twisted in my hands more than they had for anything in the room, moving outwards until each rod pointed just past the edge of each pot on the ends of the row of plants sitting on the shelf, thus encompassing all of the pots with the spread. My friend asked me which plant was thirsty, and I said "All of them!" She retested this question and got the same answer, which had apparently been different earlier that afternoon. All plants were subsequently watered. And we found that the shrubbery outside was also in need of hydration.

That was the weirdest thing I have ever encountered. Now I'm afraid of ouija boards.