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Are Plants Sentient

T

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.
 
C

Classy@Home

Aware of surroundings, interaction w/ others of same or similar species in basic ways - yes...

Self aware - no...

'Bout the same as some members here...
 

hunt4genetics

Active member
Veteran
Great question! I have wondered this myself.

One thing I have noticed. when I am happy and in a good place during a season. the harvest is great.

A few seasons ago, i was in a bad place through out the whole season. At war with my boss and co-workers, romance issues etc.

That harvest weight wise was ok. But the smoke was the most paranoia/anxiety/fear inducing ever. Every single gram of that harvest regardless of strain just caused me so much misery.

Other people's product just got me high in a good way.

A few seasons later, I smoke some of that harvest, it still effects me that way.

Never happened before or after.

I think my plants felt the rage and pain I held in all season long. The plants absorbed it, then released it back to me after the season was over.
 
T

Toes.

:wave: hey hunt4genetics, supermanlives, Classy@Home,
Here's some more to think about.

Marcel Vogel, working for IBM, was challenged to give a course in “creativity” for IBM engineers and scientists.

In this class Vogel read aloud an article about Backster’s work entitled “Do Plant’s Have Emotions?” in Argosy magazine. The article sparked an interest and a unanimous decision was made to works with plants.

Vogel then read in an article in Popular Electronics referring to Backster’s work, a wiring diagram for an instrument called a “psychanalyser”, which could pick up and amplify reactions from plants and could be built for less than $25.

Vogel then divided his class into three groups and challenged them to repeat some of Backster’s accomplishments. By the end of the seminar, not one of the three teams had achieved any success.
Vogel, on the other hand, was able to report that he had duplicated certain of Backster’s results, and proceeded to demonstrated how plants anticipate the act of having their leaves torn, react with even greater alarm to the threat of being burnt or uprooted, more so even than if they were actually torn, burnt or otherwise brutalized. Vogel wondered why he was the only one to have success, maybe because as a boy, he had been interested in anything that might explain the workings of the human mind. Reading books on magic, spiritualism, and hypnotic technique. He even held hypnotic demonstrations as a teen.

Vogel was particularly fascinated by the work of Mesmer, Coue, and Carl Jung, all various authors who subscribed to the thought of an incommensurable “Psychic energy”. He reasoned, after repeating Backster’s work, that this energy must be “storable” ( of course, being an IBM guy) and plants were the vessels to store such energy in.

Vogel had asked a “gifted” friend to help him with his new ideas. Vivian Wiley, ripped two sets of leaves form her saxifrage tree. One set she set beside her bedside table, the other in her living room. “Each day when I get up,” she told Vogel, “I will look at the leaf by my bed and will that it continue to live; but I will pay no attention to the other. We will see what happens.”

A month later, Vogel photographed her results. The leaf that his friend had paid no attention to was flaccid, turning brown, and beginning to decay. The leaf on which she had focused daily attention was radiantly vital and green, just as if it had been freshly plucked from the garden. Vogel was curious to see if he get the same results. He picked three leaves from an Elm tree outside his IBM lab, took them home and laid them beside his bed.
Each day, before breakfast, Vogel stared concentrated at the two outer leaves for about a minute, exhorting them lovingly to continue to live; the center leaf he ignored. In a week, the center leaf had turned brown and shriveled. The outer leaves were still green and healthy-looking. Most interesting to Vogel, the severed petioles appeared to be healing over. While Vivian continued with her experiment two months later showed Vogel the adored saxifrage leaf was still alive and green, while the control was completely dehydrated and brown.

maybe I could maybe stare down a RA infection?
 

Warped1

I'm a victim of fast women and slow horses
Veteran
I think plants just react to different things, I don't think they know why
 

DocLeaf

procreationist
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Each individual plant has its own metabolic rate,,, and is susceptible to surrounding environmental conditions. In this way vibrations and radio-waves can be felt by many plants,, including the tone of music and voices. Some plants then hold 'feelings' towards or against an environment or the way they are treated . peace
 
I

Iron_Lion

Strange, I was just talking about this very subject with the wife this morning. I remember a few years ago I caught a show on the discovery channel that conducted a very similar experiment with plants and electrodes where they hooked a plant up to an electrodes or an EKG (maybe) and took a pair of scissors and cut the leaf and at the exact time of the cut there was a spike in the electrode readings. Almost indicating that the plant could feel pain, or at the very least feel something. To go a long with this, I feel that when I train my plants using LST I get a much different plant than I would had I not done so. I noticed stronger branches and increased growth, almost like the plant reacts to touch, or excercise.

Very odd stuff indeed, I must say I feel like I am going crazy sometimes because I get a very strange sensation in the nerves on the back of my next sometimes when I touch my plants, almost like they are talking to me lol :biglaugh:

I believe plants are much smarter and much more aware they we even know yet, there are some truly amazing species out there. Great subject.
 
G

grozzef

pretty cool stuff, been talking to my plants and telling them i love them for a while. neat to see some science behind it.
 

Warped1

I'm a victim of fast women and slow horses
Veteran
Plant intelligence? Hmm, well let's see how this goes. Cloning will be an issue and chopping males lol..I got my popcorn.
 

Anti

Sorcerer's Apprentice
Veteran
Mythbusters did a couple of episodes on this.

Plants that were exposed to sound (whether saying nice things or angry things or music) did better than plants that were kept in silence. Plants that were exposed to MUSIC did better than plants exposed to the sound of human voices. Plants that were exposed to HEAVY METAL did better than plants exposed to classical music.

Sound Affects Plant Growth? Part 1 of 2
[youtubeif]CMiVNPXR5qw[/youtubeif]


Sound Affects Plant Growth? Part 2 of 2
[youtubeif]FhsbM9LxPAk[/youtubeif]

In Episode 61 (can't find it on youtube, sorry) they hooked plants up to polygraph and EEG and did a series of experiments. Here's some notes from that experiment, taken from a mythbusters fan site that I *DID* find while looking for the youtube vids:

Mythbusters Episode 61 said:
Primary Perception

Myth: All living things are interconnected and can communicate at an ESP level. This means that plants have feelings and can even scream in response to a stressful situation.

Tory: "Is this a myth?"

See also: * Mind Control * Pyramid Power

The build team was testing the theory of Primary perception, which was advanced in the 1960s by Cleve Baxter, world polygraph expert and founder of the FBI's polygraph unit.

Stoelting #22600 polygraph tests

The Stoelting #22600 (Stoelting Web site) was the polygraph instrument that Baxter used in advancing his Primary Perception theory. The #22600 is an "Emotional Stress Monitor" with a pneumograph (force and speed of chest movements), a cardiograph (heart), and a galvanograph (galvanic skin response).

Before getting to the Primary Perception tests, Grant and Tory took turns hooked up to the lie detector while answering questions. Grant gave Tory rather mild questions but caught him lying when asked, "Have you ever lied about your age?" Tory asked more amusing questions and caught Grant 'lying' with the question, "Have you ever built or wanted to build a female robot?"

Stoelting test #1

They setup the plant and the polygraph inside a shipping container to shield the equipment from radar frequency/electrical interference. With Grant sitting in front of the polygraph and Tory standing nearby next to the plant, Tory proceeded to do various types of 'harm' to the plant:

hitting the plant: the needle (kymograph) deflected
fire extinguisher: huge spike
thinking about burning the plant: needle jumped

In all, the plant responded 35% of the time to Tory's stimuli.

The most surprising result was that the needle responded to Tory's thoughts about harming the plant, but as the later experiments noted, these first tests didn't do a good job of isolating the variables. With Grant and Tory standing right next to the sensitive polygraph, there were many ways in which their excitement and jumping around could have caused the instrument to respond.

NOTE: There were also clips of Tory actually burning the plant, but no results.

Stoelting test #2

Grant and Tory were shocked by results. They were worried that they were causing the needle to jump as a result of being next to the polygraph. They re-ran the experiment with Grant and Tory outside the shipping container.

Angry attack Evil attack Happy attack

Inside the container: plant responded 35% of the time to Tory's stimuli Outside the container: plant responded 28% of the time to Tory's stimuli

EEG test

They switched to an EEG instead of the polygraph. The original Baxter experiments used an EEG, so they felt this was in keeping with the original myth. This time there was no response when they re-ran the experiment with Tory's harmful thoughts to plants.
Yogurt test

They setup vials of yogurt 10' apart. Yogurt is made up of bacteria, so they thought that harm to one vial of bacteria should be felt by the other. Kari dropped hot water into one of the vials of yogurt while the EEG measured the response from the other vial. There was no response on the EEG.

NOTE: The vial of yogurt was placed on a pad of foam to isolate it from vibrations
Oral Leukocyte Test

This test checked whether or not Tory's own cells reacted to harm done to Tory. White blood cells were collected from Tory's mouth placed into a test tube, with a gold wire in the test tube connected to the EEG. Kari repeatedly shocked Tory with a stun gun, but the only response was from Tory himself. The white blood cells registered no response on the EEG.

NOTE: They made sure that the stun gun was far enough away from the EEG to not cause electrical interference


Egg Drop Test

They decided to redo their first experiment, but this time they really wanted to make sure that their own actions weren't interfering with the result. Inside the shipping container, which provided electrical shielding, they setup the plant and the polygraph. They placed the plant on top of foam to isolate it from vibration. Outside the container, they setup their Grant's fancy egg drop rig over a pot of boiling water. The egg drop rig was setup to select an egg at random to drop in at a random time -- thus there would be no anticipation. The entire crew exited the building for 45 minutes while the experiment went on.

The results: no response whatsoever

Although they had interesting results with the first couple of experiments, they felt that it was probably interference from vibration, electromagnetics, or themselves that skewed the instruments. Once they were able to remove these variables from the setup, they weren't able to get the same results.

Busted!
 

Anti

Sorcerer's Apprentice
Veteran
If our plants are aware, why are they doing what we want?

We want them to grow big, fat, trichome-covered sex organs.

In exchange, we will never allow them to reproduce and they will die as virgins only to be stripped, chopped, dried, burned and inhaled.

And if they're a male, we'll outright kill them the moment we recognize them.

If our plants are self-aware and can sense our thoughts... then they are very, very dumb.

(Not to mention that I've been cloning and monocropping the same plant for 2.5 years now. I have 70 of "her" 3 weeks from harvest as we speak, while 8 moms of her sit in another space about to get raped of their branches. I wonder how "she" feels about all of this?)
 
Last edited:

InJoy

Member
Mine are happy as soon as i come in the room and give them water.

People who take care of their plants give them love.

Try loving a plant but don't give it what it needs and see what happens.

They don't thrive on the love but the care somebody who loves the plant gives them.
 

waveguide

Active member
Veteran
quite.


one of several commercial versions of jeremy lord's transducers:
http://www.dustygizmos.com/arcpages/arcmisc.htm
bioactivity.jpg


when this was in fashion, the schematics for such a device even appeared in u.s. magazine popular electronics (c.1969)

why would a plant let you torture it and smoke it? might as well ask why are humans born to work 45 years in an industrial job and watch corny tv programs. maybe for them it is enough to be kind to you :)

be nice to your plants.

and yes, totally agree on the "record keeping" eg. the high being like the plant's experience.
 

supermanlives

Active member
Veteran
all my plants have had heavy metal music from day one . and i let my plants breed alot so they are confused of my motives. keep em guessing.
 

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