The Animal Liberation Front won't like this one

"The Secret Life of Plants" is a kind of new agey classic from 1973. It even spawned a film, with music by Stevie Wonder! I haven't seen the documentary (yet), but the book strikes me as very eclectic and somewhat confusing.

It's main thesis is that plants have consciousness, and it therefore features a long line of researchers who claim to have discovered unusual abilities in plants. Some of them were real scientists, such as Jagdish Chandra Bose. Others were parapsychologists, many of whom were active in the Soviet Union. Still others were amateur researchers, including a woman who claims that her plants liked classical music but shunned heavy metal, and a man who believes that plants can communicate with outer space. Clee Backster is prominently featured, since he is the man usually associated with research on plant consciousness. Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard is mostly conspicuous by his absence, despite also dabbling in this kind of research (he actually audited tomatoes!).

Other chapters feel more removed from the main theme. Thus, the authors have included an entire section on George Washington Carver, somehow claiming that his successes as an inventor had something to do with a paranormal ability to communicate with plants. No evidence for this is presented. There are also chapters on organic agriculture and bio-dynamic farming.

While "The Secret Life of Plants" makes scientific claims (or pseudo-scientific, if you are a perennial sceptic), the book ends with a few chapters that are more forthrightly spiritual. The authors mention Rudolf Steiner, Madame Blavatsky and Alice Bailey in a positive light. They retell the story of Findhorn, its magical gardens and the "devas". Plants are said to have a kind of astral bodies. Tompkins and Bird also promise to investigate these spiritual implications in a sequel, to be called "The Cosmic Life of Plants". However, no such book seems to have been written.

I'm not saying I'm overtly hostile to the "panpsychist" tack of the authors. Quite the contrary. I wouldn't be too surprised if plants turn out to have some pretty wild talents. I mean, why not? It might also make my day, creating all kinds of problems for the militant vegans, LOL. My main problem with this book is that it deals very uncritically with the material, making it hard for the reader to know which experiments should be trusted, and which are quackery pure and simple. But then, I suppose Tompkins and Bird were "true believers". I also think their book could have been better written or edited. It got tedious to read after a while.

In the end, I give "The Secret Life of Plants" three stars. And hey, hey, let's be careful out there...