Finally someone I can relate to! You mean there are others of us out there?

all kidding aside of couse I talk to them but I don't think they listen or mine would be behaving a lot better.

I don't think that my plants can hear me but I am convinced that plants can sense energy.

I used to try to spend time sitting with my sick plants and projecting positive thoughts and feelings towards them. I am not sure that it helps but after reading various books on the subject I am convinced that our views of plants are completely outdated. The molecule DMT(Dimethyltryptamine)is widely found in plants and in humans this moleculeâÂÂs role is still largely unknown but it is thought to be released during the birth and death processes of humans and it's effects are though to contribute to the experiences (tunnels of light) that near death experience survivors report. The neurotransmitter (5-HT)Serotonin which regulates mood,sleep and other metabolic functions is also found in plants along with the hallucogenic members of this family. Plants are truly able to perform chemistry that we can only dream of and are still yet to fully understand. If anyone is interested in learning more about DMT there is an eye opening documentary and book written by Rick Strassman which truly makes one question the origins of humans religious experiences and the presence of a higher power.

I think that my plants are probably quite used to my presence. I am in their company for a large part of the day and I do devote much of my free time to their care. I think they would be able to distinguish me from other people. It is now being discussed that plants root systems are akin to our brain and that the leafy green part is more like out body with it's own circulatory system etc.

Plants rule!

Mike

Here is a link that might be useful: part of The Spirit Molecule on YouTube

I believe that my plants can sense my presence. I am very fond of them and have always enjoyed great success with my plant friends as a result. At times I have grown plants in what might be considered the wrong culture for that plant. They have done very well regardless. I believe they are trying to please me.

I've only had one plant that I could not grow. A Portulacaria afra. Not a particularly difficult plant to grow, but it just up and died on me. It was my Mom's plant. She loved that little plant and I took it to the hospital with her when she became ill, and home when she went home to die. It grew wonderfully for her. I brought it home with me as she loved it and I thought I would keep it until I died (I'm pretty young). The little plant started to look sick right away, and died within a couple of months. It didn't want to live without her. I let it go, I really had no choice. I think it felt my grief too.

I like to hear your stories Plant Whisperers.

Klyde,

I think you're right - the little Port afra had been with your mom so long and it missed her so much, it couldn't recover. I know I've mentioned this story before - one I read in a plant magazine when I was young, and it made such an impression on me. It was about a palm that sat in a corner where a little dog, a JRT if I remember correctly, would sleep under the palm. The little dog got sick and had to stay at the vets for about a week and the palm almost imediately started to droop. The owner was stumped since the plant had been grown in exactly the same place for many years and care had not changed. But a week later, when the dog returned, within a day or so, the palm perked right back up and was fine.

My plants make me feel good and I think I have the same impact on them. I think every living thing is energy (or vibration) and when we're positive and upbeat, we're throwing out good vibrations and other living things react in kind. I think that's one of the reasons that plants can change my mood if I'm in a funk. I'm responding to their good vibrations. But if I start working with my plants when my mood is less than positive, I try to go back to the first few plants I interact with and give them the benefit of my improved mood, just in case my "funk" brought them down!

Denise in Omaha

Wow, hasn't this poll been interesting? The early voters seemed about evenly split on the issue, but with later voters, there are twice as many votes for Hoyas being able to hear us. I think it's pretty fun that we all have different opinions. Going into it, I thought there would be much more unilaterality of opinion.

I should mention that when I chose the wording of the poll, I put apostrophes around the 'hear' because I couldn't figure out how to phrase it. I suppose I should have chosen 'sense' because that's closer to the idea (hence the joking Hoya ears thread title). But I wanted it to be clear I wasn't talking about contact like tearing off a leaf.

Teisa- lol I'm pretty sure my cat can hear me, but he doesn't listen too well either. ^_~

Mike- It's funny you should mention talking to sick plants, because I definitely do that. When I have one hanging on for dear life, I cheer them on quite intensely at least twice a day. And subsequently worry that my worrying near them is affecting them. But then I figure: you can't lie to a plant. With an ailing plant, I'm usually doing some focused well-wishing in my head. On the contrary, when my plants are not sick, I chatter on out loud like I've lost my mind. I don't know whether I believe it helps or not, but I do believe they 'like' it. However you define 'like' for a plant.

Your remarks about serotonin and DMT in plants were very interesting. If you think about how rudimentary our understanding of human neurophysiology and psychology is (said affectionately, having gone to grad school for it) it should be easy to admit how far we must be from understanding lifeforms not falling under the jurisdiction of our self-obsession.

Klyde- Your story about you, your mom, and the Portulacaria afra was so touching. If a Mimosa pudica reacts to a tank of insects dying in the next room, I'm certain your mom's Portulacaria was very much affected by the loss of your mom and the sadness of its new owner.

Denise- I was very interested in the perspective you introduced regarding responding to the good vibrations of your plants. I'm always thinking about how my moods are affecting my plants, but I've never thought about them sending out vibrations to me. I just always figured I'm in a good mood around them because... they're awesome and I happen to like plants. I'll be thinking about this the next time I'm around them. I liked your strategy of revisiting the first plants too lol.

GG I have a huge interest in Ethnobotany which is a peoples use of the plants in their general surroundings. After learning about the uses of plants, everything from raw building materials to medicine, food and ceremonial sacraments ones begins to realize that without plants we would have virtually nothing. Even if you only consider plants from an agricultural perspective it is very apparent that our current civilization did not really take off until the we were able to grow a surplus of cereal grains. Not having to always worry about food allows for room to start thinking about other things.
If you read about how native healers use plants you will notice one almost universal thing and that is the respect that they show for the plants. If a plant is capable of healing the sick does it not seem appropriate to thank it in exchange for it's life? Personally I cringe every time I am walking with my nephew in the forest and he decides to start thrashing some poor plant with a stick. Trying to teach a nine year old about respecting the natural world is not easy, our culture sorely lacks this kind of respect. I think there will always be that feeling of "well it's just a plant" when it comes to the general population.

Klyde and Denise both of your stories are very interesting, thanks for sharing them.

Mike

Mike- Sometimes it's almost like you're reading my mind when you respond to remarks I make and then edit out before posting.

Your original post had made me think quite a bit about how culturally we are disposed to look at plants as a set of components which can be broken down and put to use or misuse. Thus, outside the realm of botanists, most people understand little of why plants are made up of the things they are and what their lives are like. Your story about your nephew sums all this up so perfectly. Children are such startling reflections of our values, sometimes. Even people who safely release captured fruit flies back into the wild are still usually thinking about life in the form of a hierarchy where plants don't make the cut. I do believe that we should be figuring out how to live respectfully and part of being grateful is not taking more life than you need.

I got to thinking about your interest in ethnobotany and of course you're right that we couldn't muddle along very far without plants. And yet our relationship with them is much less respectful than say, with dogs. I think sometimes humans just reach this point where they go: I don't even want to know. As in: I don't even want to know I'm gluten intolerant. Maybe our relationship with plants has been limited by that, and that's too bad.

Interesting thread.

Hmmm, so we don't all talk to our plants. Thought for sure that one would be 100% ,,, I can't imagine not talking to my plants.

I think my interaction with my plants is very crazy. But since I live alone, I figure it's my little secret. Here are some examples: for the first few years of owning my carnosa, I would never turn my back on him because I thought his "creepy" vines were scary (like in the movies ,,, minority report, the ruins, etc). Because he was in my dining room, that meant there was a whole section of my dining room table where I couldn't/wouldn't sit! Here's more crazy for ya, I smell, touch, and taste my plants. Not just the blooms, but the vines, leaves, roots, everything. I especially love the fresh grassy smell of my KP. And most crazy is probably my "sentimental attachment" to my plants. My very small hoya collection isn't rare, exotic, or valuable ,,, yet, I still have it covered in my will. Seriously, how many people have a common wax plant in their will? LOL

My plants are living CREATURES and I definitely have a relationship with them, it's just hard to explain.

Jennifer

I too am fascinated by those non-plant-talkers, Jennifer. Hiding right here in our midst. Making me look crazy. I don't. know. how. they. do it.

Loved the carnosa story. I'm not fearful of any of my plants, persay, but I do apologize to them whenever I'm chopping up greens and veggies. I imagine my green smoothies are a terrible shock to my carnosa, who hangs overhead.

I figure we all communicate with our plants, some just choose to verbalize it which is more than likely (but who really knows) an anthropomorphization, projecting a human characteristic on a non-human. Plants really can not be expected to know our languages but hey that does not stop us from talking to our dogs or cats does it?
Each time you stop to take a look at a plant, smell a flower or simply enjoy a plants beauty you are directly interacting with it. If you have ever turned around only to catch someone looking directly at you then you have experienced our ability to sense energy. If you choose to develop abilities like this you might be surprised what you can do, communicating with plants might be one of those things. Remember plants flower to perform reproduction and when we admire flowers we are more or less being seduced by a plant, it might prefer a visit from it's pollinator but I am sure it feel flattered none the less.

Mike

Well, you're probably right that anthropomorphizing is part of the story, but I think it's probably even more fundamental. I really don't feel like I "choose" to vocalize to my plants... or my cat. I'm not even fully aware of it, until I concentrate on it. I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the parts of our brain that are active during the nurturing sorts of activities we engage in with our plants.

That's why I'd be interested to hear whether the non-talkers are repressing the instinct for the sake of logic and dignity or whether it's just never come remotely close to happening. And also if they talk to their pets or themselves or mutter when they're solving problems. :) Can we conduct a study, please?

** I wanted to put a caveat in place here. That is, obviously some of my talking IS conscious and intentional (like saying sorry for hacking up a cabbage), but most of it is happening on a subconscious level. As in, I'll only realize I'm talking when my cat runs up to me to find out what I'm yammering to the plants about.

I think the talking get worse the more you give into it, but it's not purely habitual.

I'm one of the non-talkers, but I do talk to my computer (when it needs to behave better or speed up). I've been known to talk to copiers & definately printers (I was a professional word processor for some years).

Am also an artist & a quilter & I sometimes speak to the quilts or just out loud to myself about them, esp. when they are coming along spectacularly (I speak fake Italian abt them). Don't have pets these days, I would talk to them if I did.

Speaking fake Italian to my sister's new kitten ten yrs. ago is how she got her name -- we were horsing around & I was saying things like she's a bella kitty - is-a-bella-kitty & then sister & I looked at each other & EUREKA; Kitty ISABELLA came into being!

I just am not inclined to speak w/ the plants, tho' i sometimes curse myself out out loud for knocking over a Hoya or disrupting a baby leaf I've been propagating & just have left alone, untouched.

I do talk to my plants but have been a little silent lately. Mike once said that "plants are truely healing creatures if we let them". Denise and I must be on the same wavelength!

Jennifer, I am VERY sentimental about my plain green carnosa (Nikki). I can't wait until the day she blooms. She is made up of my original cutting from my home-ec teacher, and the first hoya cuttings I ever got here on GW! Gardening is my therapy and I will do it as long as possible. The way I figure it, we make plants happy, they make us happy!

Great post, GG!

Brad AKA Moonwolf

I do talk to my plants, but I don't think they're listening.
That doesn't stop me, though. As several of you have described, there are complex
relationships between the plant and animal kingdoms that we have yet to fully describe.
I know that a plant is stimulated by a wind or a whirring of bird wings as surely as by
a human whisper or vibrating word/sound.

I once heard a mystic speaking a poem about how he had begun as a mineral, and had died
to become a plant, and then simple animal life, to finally become a Human. He asked, What
has death ever lost him?

To go a little off-topic, I think that Humans are much healthier when we are immersed in
greenery. Certainly we are a benefit as stewards to our houseplants, but I think that we
gain far more from them than they do from us.

Gardening is therapy, indeed. And, for me, it is also natural communion - worship.
I attend no organized Church - I worship only in the Green Chapel. I believe that this connects
me to our most primal myth, that of the Garden of Eden, when we were but children as a species,
delighting in the world for the first time, naming things for the first time, and scarcely
differentiated from the earth, the plants, and the creatures around us.

Thanks for the thoughts everyone, and thanks GG for the room to ramble.


Josh

Oh good! A non-talker speaks up! Thanks for the thorough response. It pretty much crushes my theory if you talk to quilts and kittens.

I haven't been able to dig up any good brain studies on talking to non-humans, but I did read that it calms feral cats down when they are spoken to in the classic high-pitched voice most people tend to use. Which reinforces my belief that, if we give in to our instincts, they may be getting more out of it than we expect.

I completely agree, Josh, that we are more healthy when we are surrounded by greenery. And I don't think it's just about the oxygen. Apparently houseplants reduce cold-related illnesses by more than 30% and hospital patients with a garden view recover more quickly. There are also psychological studies that show that people in nursing homes given a plant to care for are healthier and live longer.

I also thought I'd share some of the more interesting pieces I found:

Plants grow better for female voices

Music triggers a response in 2 rice plant genes

Noah forgot the plants, 'playing' baby sunflowers & plant-bots

Plants prefer death metal to classical

This whole conversation puts me in mind of Roald Dahl's The Sound Machine.

Who would have guessed?! Death metal! Ha!

That would be the closest description of the music that I blast when I'm at home... ;)

Josh

Don't know where you'd look to check, but in NYC, The Rusk (Burn?) Institute (a medical facility) has a whole greenhouse for horticultural therapy programs w/ their patients.

It has several rooms in which the greenhouse people grow different kinds of plants. Of these, many diff. types are used to propagate for use by the patients. There's also a nice sized koi pond in the entry part of the greenhouse. They also seem to do some work w/ vivariums & a variety of gekko-type critters.

They've likely done studies & have results in these areas, but I don't know where you'd check this.

Clarification: I don't really talk TO the quilts, maybe more to myself or the open air ABOUT them. But to the cats, definately!

Am afraid to even ask what is Death Metal (some ultra heavy form of heavy metal?)

Yeah, you got it, Karen ;)
Death Metal is focused on, well, Death....
It's not my favorite metal genre - I'm actually into strong, clear vocals rather than growls and grunts.
A band like "Six Feet Under," with the classic Revenge of the Zombie, would be an example of good Death Metal.
"Cannibal Corpse," however, would be a bit too gruesome and with lyrics nearly indiscernible.

Anyhow, probably more than you wanted to know... ;)

My plants prefer Folk Metal, with themes of Nature and Solitude.


Josh

Aw, I was enjoying imagining you saying things like, "Darn it, how'd you get this crazy stitch in you?" Or "Oh dear, now you've gone and gobbled up all my green velvet."