http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Plants-Peter-Tompkins/dp/0060915870/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279162917&sr=1-1THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird is a wonderful book of wisdom about the plant world and life in general. Like many people my age, I cut my teeth on Disney's "Living Desert" back in the 1950s. That film killed the notion for me that nothing lives in Death Valley and if Death Valley can be alive what else is possible?
SECRET LIFE is like the old Disney films because the book describes science that challenges stereotypical mainstream thinking. Anyone who believes plants are sentient beings will love this book. If you've done much reading on this subject you've probably seen Tompkins and Bird quoted elsewhere.
In the first part of their book, the authors explore the attributes of plants and pretty much conclude they have everything in common with animals-except plants probably came first on the evolutionary ladder and prepared the way for animals. In fact, if earth was invaded by alien species, the authors suggest the aliens were probably plants. But, you say, plants have roots and stay put (for the most part) and plants produce chlorophyll. Shell fish (oysters, mussels) and sea anemones can be rooted to one spot and small protozoa-like creatures produce chlorophyll.
Probably the thing I like the best about this book is that finally, someone links the Chakras to real body parts-the seven endocrine centers--and explains the reasons why these "hot spots" are so important. Also, Tompkins and Bird explain the scientific reasoning behind Bach flower remedies and many other "new age" products you can find at Fresh Fields and other holistic stores.
Skeptics will always have doubts, but after 30 years of organic gardening and non-academic exposure to plants, I know Tompkins and Bird are onto something. So do many modern scientists who have discovered belatedly that much of what the authors described 30 years ago may be true afterall.
Cutting edge scientists are frequently ignored. Once upon a time some people thought George Washington Carver was a fruitcake because he thought plants had feelings (they do). Carver discovered many unusual things as did a number of other later Nobel winners, although sometimes folks like Gregor Mendel were not recognized until it was too late.
If you want to be a better person, a wiser consumer, a great gardener, and healthier, you owe it to yourself to read THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS. It isn't all about them.
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This review is from: The Secret Life of Plants (Paperback)
I am not exaggerating. When I picked up a copy of THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS, to go on a journey into the previously "unknown" world of plants, it was listed as, both, a new age and an occult book. Yes, to some it sounds pretty woo woo and out there that the common houseplant could take such a liking to Brahms, or such a disliking to hard rock music, that it would be driven to either thrive or shrivel. Yet, according to scientists and scientific scholars, stranger things have happened--and, in their words and by their accounts, they really DID happen! For example, plants who were the subjects of numerous tests and studies in a laboratory, were proven to have "human-like" feelings for the people that they were introduced to. In fact, the relationships progressed to the point that when one of the participants in the study nearly got run over by public transportation on the street, the participating plant was recorded in reacting in alarm to the peril that the human subject was put in! This wasn't all. Plants also are also proven, in this book, to respond to human sexuality in a very powerful (if not anthropomorphized) manner. Besides the studies, we are introduced to the beliefs of Goethe and the scientific progress made by George Washington Carver (of peanut cultivation fame).
I can definitely see why this engrossing book inspired a soundtrack and an (as of today) unreleased documentary film. This book, written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, is, quite possibly one of the most engrossing books pertaining to biology and modern-day symbiotic relationships between plants and humans that I have ever read. If THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS had been assigned reading in my high school biology class, I might have chosen a different path in college (in the plant sciences, perhaps!). If that isn't a vote of confidence from me, the humble liberal arts major, I don't know what is! Read this fantastic book today.
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Wikipedia:
The Secret Life of Plants (1973) is a book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, described as "A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man."
The book explores the idea that plants may be sentient, despite their lack of a nervous system and a brain, an idea not supported by mainstream biology. This sentience has purportedly been observed through changes in plants' conductivity, as through a polygraph, as pioneered by Cleve Backster. The book also contains a summary of Goethe's theory of plant metamorphosis. The book delves deeply into such unconventional topics as the aura, psychophysics, orgone, radionics, kirlian photography, magnetism/magnetotropism, bioelectrics, dowsing, and (more conventionally) the history of science.
The Secret Life of Plants was the basis for the 1979 documentary of the same name, with a soundtrack specially recorded by Stevie Wonder called Journey through the Secret Life of Plants.
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