Do Plants Talk?

As I work among my flowers, I find myself talking
to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring
them as if they were human beings.  Much laughter I provoke
among my friends by so doing, but that is of no consequence.
We are on such good terms, my flowers and I.

- Celia Thaxter, 1835-1894

I also talk to my plants. I can hear their voices answering me.

 Many people talk to their plants. A recent study agrees with Prince Charles' comment two decades ago, saying that it was very important to talk to plants and that they respond to us.  In this study the Royal Horticultural Society found that tomato plants grew faster when read to. 

The idea of talking to plants appeared in literature in the nineteenth century when Gustave Fechner wrote that he believed that plants had emotions and that humans could promote healthy growth through these emotions by talking to them. Later Luther Burbank wrote that plants may not understand the spoken word, but could telepathically understand the meaning of speech.

Some forty years ago in The Secret Life of Plants the authors affirmed these ideas by experiments proving that plants feel the emotions of their gardeners from some distances away and respond. 

Some of us are even so sensitive to our gardens that we know without seeing them that they need something.  It could be water or more light, or even just our presence speaking with love and admiration for these special beings.

We can have an effect on plants and they physically respond. But do plants talk to us? They have no possibility for speech, but can they communicate in different ways? In the seventeenth century it was believed that plants had souls. In Islamic philosophy this is believed to be the case.  Having a soul connotes a basic consciousness.

Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that a plant has no mind. I tell them that a plant is alive and conscious. A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive.

—Pablo Amaringo, Peruvian ayahuasquero

I agree with these Indians.  A spirit inhabits every tree and every plant, even flowers.  They do speak to us, if we know how to listen.  Most gardeners have cultivated the fine art of listening to their plants' voices.

The temple bell stops

but I still hear the sound

coming out of the flowers.

- Basho, 1680

There is a new apparatus that measures the messages of plants and posts them on Twitter.   It will help gardeners know when their plant needs to be watered.  For those of us who have cultivated listening to our plants, this machine could be fun, but unnecessary.  Our plants talk to us and we respond to their needs.  Could there be anything more down-to-earth for a gardener to know?