"How plants communicate"

- Taken from the article listed below (partial article):
"How plants communicate - D. Kroeze MSc, Canna Research."


Plants have many ways of interpreting their
environment. Plants can tell the difference
between above and below.
But how can a plant tell the difference between
above and below?

Seeing:
Besides gravity, light also tells the plant which way
it should grow. Plants grow toward light and, to be
precise in the direction of where the light is most
blue. The reason for this is that plants absorb large
amounts of blue light. So the more blue light there is,
the fewer other plants there are that want to use the
light. Plants use what are called a photoreceptor
to perceive the color blue. But blue is not in fact the
only color that plants use to see each other.
Plants are green because they mainly absorb the
red part of the visible light spectrum. Plants can
also use the quantity of red light (to be precise,
the relationship between red and far red light)
to determine if and where other plants are in the
vicinity.
Seeds use this trick to decide when best to
germinate. Growing plants will grow taller to get
out of the shadow of plants that are around them,
they may also grow in another direction.

Plants taste and smell as well.
They taste below ground, using their roots. Plants secrete substances
below ground which allows them to absorb
nutrients; other plants can use their roots to taste
these. Based on what they taste they can tell how
strong and how far away other plants are. A plant
uses that information to decide whether or not to
get into the underground contest for nutrients and
water.(I FOUND THIS INTERESTING! MAYBE YOU COULD FORCE/TRICK THE PLANTS INTO TAKING UP MORE NUTRIENTS BY GROWING IN ONE GIANT BED, INSTEAD OF INDIVIDUAL POTS?) They can also sense matter from the above
ground parts of the plant that have been washed
down by the rain into the ground.
Plants produce substances. Other plants can smell these substances so they know they’re not alone. Plants can also transmit specific information using these odors!
Above ground plants smell each other. If plants
smell ethylene they know other plants are nearby.
Plants can in fact smell more types of substances but
let’s keep it to this for now.
Odors:
You could probably get the impression that
plants are each other’s enemies and can only
perceive things in order to compete for light and
nutrients. This is only partly true. Plants warn each
other for approaching danger such as foraging
animals and insects!
If a plant is being eaten, it secretes a substance
that makes it less tasty. In addition to this it also
secretes other substances to warn plants in the
neighborhood of catastrophe. This can be
secreted both above and below ground, but are
usually aromatic substances. This happens, say,
when attacked by spider mites. Once warned,
the plants around them also manufacture these
aromatic substances and so pass on the warning
in turn while they also make themselves less tasty
for the insects.
Unfortunately this strategy is less
effective indoors. You can understand that spider
mites have little choice when in a growing room
and have to put up with a less tasty meal.
If you’re thinking that plants start panicking and are
going to send distress calls all over the place every
time a leaf gets torn, you’re mistaken. Plants know
exactly when insects are eating them because they
recogonise their saliva. They even know which insect
is eating them and pass that precise information
on!! It’s not only plants that can interpret these
signals. Predatory mites and other natural enemies
respond to these signals too.

Evolution has arranged things in a way that they
know that a tasty meal awaits them where the
odor given off by these signals is the strongest.

Plants communicate underground with other
organisms as well. They call on certain fungi and
bacteria for help when there are not enough
nutrients available. Plants do this by secreting very
small quantities of certain substances. The microorganisms
release nutrients for the plant and get
energy-rich sugars in return. Other advantages
for the plant are an increased resistance against
soil pathogens and improved resistance to
dehydration.

Talking?
It’s a well-known fact that there are people who
say that plants do better when you talk to them.
Although researchers have been working for a
long time on the question of whether plants react
positively to speech, no convincing research has
been published to date.

Touch:
Plants do have a sense of touch. Researchers
discovered this when doing a test involving plant
hormones. It turned out that not only did the plants
that were given the hormone stay smaller, but so
did the plants that were given a substance that
was entirely inactive. The reason for staying small
appeared to lie in the plants being touched when
the substance was applied and not in the hormone
itself. So, plants stay smaller if touched! What has
this got to do with the influence on a plant
if it’s touched? In addition to being smaller the
plant goes on flowering longer. These reports tend
to concern plants that give flowers such as roses.
In addition to delayed flowering and staying small,
plants that are touched frequently have smaller
leaves, reduced photosynthesis and accelerated
aging. How it is that a plant’s development and
growth can be influenced by being touched is not
precisely known today, but if you touch your plants
often you can be sure of a smaller harvest!

Listening:
Although no organisms have been found on plants
that allow them to perceive sounds, they do react
to music and can distinguish this from ’conventional’
sound. The influence of tones and music on plant
growth and development is a relatively new area
for science, but a lot of research is going on. -(IN A PREVIOUS ARTICLE THEY RECOMMENDED NO MORE THAN 3 HOURS OF MUSIC A DAY, AND RECOMMENDED SYMPHONY AND SINGING BIRD CALLS IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY? ALSO, I BELIEVE THEY SAID IT WOULD HELP WITH FOLIAR SPRAYS, SINCE THE MUSIC SEEMED TO VIBRATE THE STOMATA OPEN)

And anything else?
Could it be that plants have senses that we haven’t
the faintest idea about today? A book called ‘The
Secret Life of Plants’ says yes. Although a bestseller,
many researchers at the time concluded, despite
high expectations, that the book was far from
usable for science. But, over 35 years later, some of
the claims don’t seem quite so weird. Plants really
do seem to communicate with each other and to
react to music, but how they do that appears to be
very different.
Like other living things plants do have senses. Just
like us (but in a slightly different way) plants can
smell, taste, see, hear and feel. And they know
which way is up and which way is down. So plants
have a pretty good idea of their environment and
influence this in what is apparently a carefully
thought-out way. If plants do have more senses,
researchers will certainly discover them one day
whether or not inspired by fantasy or the occult.
Ir. D. Kroeze, CannaResearch
‘The Secret Life of
Plants’ initially sparked
off expectations of a
revolution in the area of
plant science. Sadly the
line separating myth from
reality was very thin.

my plant is smarter than yours

Today i decided to stump my plant and she got it right.

Great post and great read. Makes you wonder who is the real top dog on the planet. Plants seem to have a true oneness with each other. We may cut a few down but we can never destroy them all.

Excellent read!

thx for posting.

Reminds of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening"...

your welcome

i'll try to post the article on How Music Effects Your Plants sometime in the near future.
there is another one on How Colors Effect Your Plants.

I do believe the music/soundwave theory. Jason King did an article on Sonic Bloom.

It's all about vibrations...

http://www.originalsonicbloom.com/

And you seem like a very open-minded grower, so please check out my thread (with video and research links) on ORMUS:

https://www.rollitup.org/organics/220726-ormus-ancient-secret-rediscovered.html

sandmonkey said:

and you seem like a very open-minded grower, so please check out my thread (with video and research links) on ormus:

https://www.rollitup.org/organics/220726-ormus-ancient-secret-rediscovered.html

Click to expand...

yep its all about vibrations... Just as all things in this world.

jberry said:

yep its all about vibrations... Just as all things in this world.

Click to expand...

Exactly! I like the way you think.

+rep

Interesting you brought this topic up. Had a conversation with a FOAF today about her house plants. She was telling me about two corn plants she had in a room that would not stay away from each other. They were both up against a wall and would turn and grow towards the other plant, no matter what position she had them in. This annoyed her to the point that she transplanted them into the same pot. After putting them together she said they started growing incredibly fast up to the ceiling, I'm guessing 8+ foot. Now she has to clip the tops off every year or so.

So what does this say about the plants and their ability to communicate with one another. Do some plants long for companionship? Or is this something a bit more primortial like safety in numbers, where the plants need/want to be close to other plants of the same type because the unlikelyhood they will be the one picked out of a bunch rather than being the one smelly/tasty plant in the middle of a forest of not so tasty plants that get eatten by everything including your grandmother. I believe plants are as individual as we humans consider ourselves. Some like the solitude of never coming in contact with another human, for example the rugged mountain man that went into the forest, built himself a house, and never looked back. Yet some like the swarms of individuals that live in cities like New York City, see hundreds if not thousands of people everyday on just their commute to work. So if we look at plants in this light, we might be able to breed these traits into them. Say a plant that grows better within close proximity of another plant, maybe in another pot or possibly in the same pot all together.

Just something to think about. Might be a little bit out there, but it just my 2 cents.

The idea that they respond to talking to reminds me of a book a read years ago about how water reacts to different external stimuli. They tested this by playing different music or having people either argue or be joyful next to a glass of water. Once the water had be around these different energies they would freeze it. With doing this it would create different crystal formations corresponding to the different kinds of energy that was being add or whatever you call it, to the water. It was something like happy/joyful/positive energies would create uniform crystal structures, where negative energy would be very chaotic. This has to do with plants and humans for that matter because we are all based on water. Might explain why/how plants can be effected by different vibrations.

lowender said:

the idea that they respond to talking to reminds me of a book a read years ago about how water reacts to different external stimuli. They tested this by playing different music or having people either argue or be joyful next to a glass of water. Once the water had be around these different energies they would freeze it. With doing this it would create different crystal formations corresponding to the different kinds of energy that was being add or whatever you call it, to the water. It was something like happy/joyful/positive energies would create uniform crystal structures, where negative energy would be very chaotic. This has to do with plants and humans for that matter because we are all based on water. Might explain why/how plants can be effected by different vibrations.

Click to expand...

messages from water, is the book your speaking of i believe.

nice thread. much appreciated info

LowEnder said:

The idea that they respond to talking to reminds me of a book a read years ago about how water reacts to different external stimuli. They tested this by playing different music or having people either argue or be joyful next to a glass of water. Once the water had be around these different energies they would freeze it. With doing this it would create different crystal formations corresponding to the different kinds of energy that was being add or whatever you call it, to the water. It was something like happy/joyful/positive energies would create uniform crystal structures, where negative energy would be very chaotic. This has to do with plants and humans for that matter because we are all based on water. Might explain why/how plants can be effected by different vibrations.

Click to expand...

i read another book like that, except the author wrote words like love and hate on different pea-tree dishes of water and froze them, and under a microscope one would have ugly crystal formations, and the other would be all nice and organized. it was a neat picture book

macdadyabc said:

i read another book like that, except the author wrote words like love and hate on different pea-tree dishes of water and froze them, and under a microscope one would have ugly crystal formations, and the other would be all nice and organized. It was a neat picture book

Click to expand...

the hidden messages of water is the book you guys are talking about.

There is like 5 different books on the subject all written by masaru emoto.

I was taught that talking to plants stimulates their growth because we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, exactly the opposite of plants.

this is true mikegolfer. but its the breathing (as u said) not the talking that helps

my girls eventually find smoke signals are the best way of communication...

Great read, I need to stop touching my plants im too touchie =x lol