#psychobotany

If you’ve ever wondered about the emotional depth of plants, this movie should really give you a tickle. It’s also got an entire soundtrack by Stevie Wonder. Too Cool! It’s one of my faves and will be playing at Hollywood Theater on Thursday, April 23rd thanks to Mississippi Records Music & Film Series.

In 1966, Cleve Backster, a former interrogator for the CIA and a leading authority on lie detection, conducted experiments in plant ESP, using polygraph (lie detectors) techniques. His experiments supported the idea that plants are sensitive to human thought. These conclusions, linked with growing interest in cybernetics, and well-established evidence regarding plant sensitivity to environmental changes, spurred additional research interests. In 1970, defense engineer L. George Lawrence remarked, "…a few stunning discoveries of excellent promise [have] prompted those most active in this field to predict that, in time, parapsychological methods might well rival the orthodox communications arts and sciences currently in use." (Electronics World, April, 1970).

It appears that Mr. George has yet to be proven wrong. Thirty-eight years later, the U.S. Department of Defense has taken great interest in plant communication. Specifically, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the DoD’s budget-gobbling R&D branch, has sought to enlist plants in the so-called “War on Terror.” Their Biological Input/Output Systems (BIOS) Program attempts to create “sentinel plants”. When the plants are in the presence of certain triggers—chemicals released by explosives, for instance—they will supposedly offer a bioengineered response such as glowing/fluorescing, or ceasing the production of chlorophyll. Articles on the subject report that de-chlorophyllized plants over a broad geographic area would show up in satellite imagery as a once-green landscape now turned brown or even white.