New discoveries show that flora can hear, make, and respond to sounds
STORY BY JUSTIN HOUSMAN
Photo by Oktay Yildiz
In 1979, Stevie Wonder released an ambitious double album called Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants—it was a disaster, the most universally panned flop of his career. A conceptual leap, full of moody synthesizers, bird chirps, wind chimes, and strange narration, it was based on the 1973 bestselling book The Secret Life of Plants. Critics and audiences hated the album, and also were perplexed: Were they supposed to play this for their plants? The book, written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, was even weirder. It argued plants are sentient beings that not only can hear, but have musical preferences (classical) and can communicate with sounds and even telepathy. A far-out bit of 1970s New Ageism laced with quackery that was bought as much for laughs as it was genuine interest, the book set back research into plants and bioacoustics for decades.
But that was then.
In 2018, researchers from Tel Aviv University published two studies on the acoustic lives of
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