Since plants can sense electromagnetic fields, and a human heartbeat creates one, is it possible that plants might perceive our vibrations?
The Speaking Plants: A World Within a World
Penetrating the ground with the roots and reaching toward the sky with the stem, even in stillness, plants are stories of becoming. If I imagine humans conversing with nature, plants would be the bridge, the ones speaking. From the first bud blooming, wafting its scent into the wind, to the frost on the fields glistening on the grass, they are the gateways through which we pass from one season to another.
As spring arrived, I often found myself thinking of berries growing somewhere far away, close to the mountains. I saw myself walking a great distance in search of them. Little did I know, they were closer than I imagined. The black fruit grew, small circles forming a bigger circle. Another cycle of life was being completed as the bird returned from migration, feasting on berries by my window. I was surprised. Was it a sign from the berries? Had they spoken to me in some way? Maybe Mark Twain was right after all when he wrote, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
Apart from the five known human senses, plants also respond to another fifteen stimuli. According to Italian plant physiologist Stefano Mancuso, they can detect gravity, electromagnetic fields, and various chemical compounds. In one experiment, he placed two plants nearby. One was supplied with abundant resources like water, oxygen, and minerals, while the other was intentionally deprived. Their roots couldn’t connect, yet the abundant plant provided for the other. How could they share without physical contact? Besides the mycorrhizal network, plants communicate through smell, sharing both information and resources. They have over 3,000 scents in their vocabulary of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), each message distinct from another.
The conversation of plants also includes messages for the ecosystem. Flowers have long been communicating with bees, hiding ultraviolet maps and guiding the vision of pollinators. Tomatoes and cucumbers synthesise chemicals to attract predators of pests that harm them. But what about humans and plants? Since plants can sense electromagnetic fields, and a human heartbeat creates one, is it possible that plants might perceive our vibrations? It’s questionable, and I choose to leave it to the imagination.
It is difficult to understand the otherness of others, even between humans. So plants and animals appear farther in relatedness, despite the fact that we have all evolved from the same source, following the same rhythms of the season. Yet, In this peak season of productivity, I’m distracted and dismal. With the rising heat, the berry tree is struggling. Fruits are drying, leaves are falling, and vicariously, I’m living in autumn.
What are we to make of this climate, for people and for plants? Climate change is not a distant reality, something happening on glaciers or sinking islands. It might be unfolding right outside our window, in drying plants, or perhaps in our hearts. It’s certain that we need nature, but the berry tree whispers another story, one in which nature needs us too.
After speaking to everyone who could water the plants but hadn’t, I took desperate measures. I filled a bucket and aimed at the garden from my window. At first, I felt a bit embarrassed and obsessed. But I had to make peace with my nature, however it may be. Eventually, I felt wealthier and more abundant than I had ever felt before.
And then it dawned on me that the tree will survive, like she did last summer, despite the heat and the thirst. Perhaps this was never a matter of survival, but of finding a world within a world, where plants speak and we listen, where intelligence can take the shape of a berry, where the distance between self and nature diminishes and wilting leaves carry the wisdom of hope.
