It pays to be kind to your plants

Press, 26 June 1987, Page 14

It pays to be kind to your plants

SUSAN SPAIN

says research shows

plants have feelings

Whispering grass is giving reluctant gardeners a good excuse. Lawns should be seldom be mowed because grass feels pain, according to the latest findings of an International conservation group.

Dr Klaus Harben says in his book, “Plant Feeling and Explanation,” published by Harz Press, Hamburg: “However inanimate the flower plant or vegetable looks, it has feelings and can feel pain and rejection the same as human beings.

“If you doubt plant life is loveless, try ignoring them and you’ll find the drooping ones are the ones with rejection plainly showing itself, while the prize posies are the ones that are loved and encouraged by talk to give of their best.”

The conservation group stoutly maintains that trees talk to each other, tomatoes scream when cut, onions, cabbages and cauliflower quail at the. sight of a kitchen knife.

Much similar speculation has appeared in the scientific press for a long time with both sides

claiming all evidence to be either sense or nonsense. '

But the plants have feelings theory ; gained more credibility when Prince Charles admitted to a television team that he regularly communed with nature and talked to his plants. They in turn responded to his interest

Many scientists believe that certain noise levels, talk included, [can be beneficial to plants, All this may sound like something out of science

fiction. But increasing numbers of scientific groups firmly believe that plants are more aware than you think. / They don’t just stay put and vegetate. Scientists are now listening to plant response with lots of complicated looking detection electronic gear. Others play music to them, even zapping them with ultrasound.

A Jersey plant biologist, Dr Clement Blampied, claims that greenhouse plants need a gentle stroke at least once a day.

Professor Mordecai Jaffe, of the United States Wake Forest University, in North Carolina, claims that stroking of such plants makes indoor plants squatter, tougher, and more resistant to plant disease and drought. The idea that plants have emotions is nothing new. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, proclaimed this, at least 2000 years before the book “Day of the Triffids” was written.

The late Dr Lafayette Hubbard, in his experiments at the University of California, claimed his findings revealed that tomatoes screamed when peeled or cut

He also revealed that “I’ve measured the death throes of a cabbage, potato and lettuce when they’ve been carved up for the table.” A New York lie detector expert, Milton Dieter, was curious about Dr Hubbard’s findings. So he attached the electrodes of the machine to his large rubber plant. A spot of water was rewarded with the graph’s pen tracing a pattern similar to that of a human expressing pleasure. Put-

ting the tip of a hot match to a leaf made the pen go wild.

He found the plant registered distress when a large dog was brought into the room, and it was really scared when a large dragonfly flew in the window. So Milton Dieter deduced that the expres-* sion “on the grapevine” might be nearer the mark than we think.

Talking to plants achieves nothing, but good shout at them may encourage growth, according to Dr Pearl Weinberger of the biology department at the university of Ottawa. However, she says, ultrasound is the best. . ■ By exposing seeds to ultrasound she found she could halve the time it took to get leaf lettuces to market compared with

similar but silent. conditions. --... .. : .She has also managed to accelerate the growth of tree Seeds by 20 per cent, different plants responding to different ultrasounds. 4 . She has also .experimented with playing , a recording of a male voice choir to cucumbers, bagpipes to vegetables, and has serenaded cucumber, oats, and corn with primitive tunes played on: a xylophone-type instrument used in the Valley Tonga, East Africa. “The natives would go around planting the seeds, stomping on them, and singing these songs,” she explains. ; . At sound levels during j speech and singing she * found the response slow. But higher sound levels — in ultrasound — produced cucumbers growing twice their normal size. Interesting ,as the findings are, many dedicated gardeners will say they know it all. For years they have been encouraging their plants with a song and a few words. —Copyright, DUO