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Toes.
Are plants sentient?
Do plants have feelings, full on emotions, maybe even ESP?
Cleve Backster, Marcel Vogel, Sir Jagatai Chandra Bose, George Washington Carver , just to name a few, all thought so, and devoted their lives (or part of it) to the idea of plant sentience.
Cleve Backster may be better known than the others in this area of research. Backster became famous for attaching a lie detector to his Dracaena massangeana, aka the Dragon plant, during a session in 1966 at his school for LEO, teaching them the finer arts of the polygraph.
On impulse he decided to attach the electrodes of one of his machines to a leaf of the dracaena. Backster was curious to see if the leaf would be affected by water poured on its roots, and if so, how, and how soon.
As the plant absorbed the water up through its stem, the galvanometer (a part of the polygraph machine) did not indicate less resistance, as might have been expected since a moister plant should conduct electricity better. The pen on the graph paper, instead of trending upward, was trending downward, with a lot of saw tooth motion on the tracing which, to this highly trained polygraph instructor, meant the plant was experiencing emotion.
He was so excited after this observation ( I know I would be), that he continued with the plant the rest of the night.
Backster knew 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. Backster decided to do just that to the plant. He tried dunking the plant’s leaf into hot coffee, nothing registered. It wasn’t until he decided to burn the plant did he see a reaction. Backster claims, the moment he had a picture of fire in his mind, he saw downward movement on the graph, way before he even made a motion to get matches. He wondered if the plant had been reading his mind.
When Backster left the room and returned with some matches. He found another sudden surge had registered on the chart. Reluctantly he set about burning the leaf. This time there was a lower peak of reaction. Later, as he went through the motions of pretending he would burn the plant, there was no reaction whatsoever. The plant appeared to be able to differentiate between real and pretend intent.
Backster stopped instructing polygraph after this night in the ‘60’s. Instead he plunged into the most meticulous investigation of the phenomena in order to establish just how the plant was reacting to his thoughts, and through what medium.
What became of these experiments was dubbed the “Backster Effect”.
One of Backster's, most interesting observations, is... if a plant is threatened with overwhelming danger or damage, it reacts self-defensively in a way similar to a opossum, or indeed, to a human being, by "passing out", or going into a deep faint.
That means, I could cause a plant to go into a coma by walking into the garden with a pair of shears in my hand, and visions of it hanging upside down in my closet.
Do plants have feelings, full on emotions, maybe even ESP?
Cleve Backster, Marcel Vogel, Sir Jagatai Chandra Bose, George Washington Carver , just to name a few, all thought so, and devoted their lives (or part of it) to the idea of plant sentience.
Cleve Backster may be better known than the others in this area of research. Backster became famous for attaching a lie detector to his Dracaena massangeana, aka the Dragon plant, during a session in 1966 at his school for LEO, teaching them the finer arts of the polygraph.
On impulse he decided to attach the electrodes of one of his machines to a leaf of the dracaena. Backster was curious to see if the leaf would be affected by water poured on its roots, and if so, how, and how soon.
As the plant absorbed the water up through its stem, the galvanometer (a part of the polygraph machine) did not indicate less resistance, as might have been expected since a moister plant should conduct electricity better. The pen on the graph paper, instead of trending upward, was trending downward, with a lot of saw tooth motion on the tracing which, to this highly trained polygraph instructor, meant the plant was experiencing emotion.
He was so excited after this observation ( I know I would be), that he continued with the plant the rest of the night.
Backster knew 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. Backster decided to do just that to the plant. He tried dunking the plant’s leaf into hot coffee, nothing registered. It wasn’t until he decided to burn the plant did he see a reaction. Backster claims, the moment he had a picture of fire in his mind, he saw downward movement on the graph, way before he even made a motion to get matches. He wondered if the plant had been reading his mind.
When Backster left the room and returned with some matches. He found another sudden surge had registered on the chart. Reluctantly he set about burning the leaf. This time there was a lower peak of reaction. Later, as he went through the motions of pretending he would burn the plant, there was no reaction whatsoever. The plant appeared to be able to differentiate between real and pretend intent.
Backster stopped instructing polygraph after this night in the ‘60’s. Instead he plunged into the most meticulous investigation of the phenomena in order to establish just how the plant was reacting to his thoughts, and through what medium.
What became of these experiments was dubbed the “Backster Effect”.
One of Backster's, most interesting observations, is... if a plant is threatened with overwhelming danger or damage, it reacts self-defensively in a way similar to a opossum, or indeed, to a human being, by "passing out", or going into a deep faint.
That means, I could cause a plant to go into a coma by walking into the garden with a pair of shears in my hand, and visions of it hanging upside down in my closet.
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