Plants do respond to stimuli. Try talking to them
I have always been intrigued by the possibility of plants responding to humans. Once in a while, I have played music for them—the music flowing from my mobile phone. A baul song, a Mehidi Hasan ghazal, a Brian Silas piano piece or Bade Glulam Ali’s Ka karoon sajni. I have spoken to them about their well-being and even asked them to flower soon.
But I have not persevered enough to know whether they respond.
I’m told they do, going by the experiences of Ganesh Babu which I share here.
Embelia ribes is an aggressive woody climber, it was known to produce small white flowers in bunches. When brought in the campus of the Bengaluru-based Foundation for the Revitalization of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) and planted there were high expectations that it would be a notable performer.
Brought from Kerala the plant showed no sign of activity. It lay dormant and didn’t bother to bestir itself even a little.
By the way, FRLHT’s nursery is famous for preserving and showcasing 1,500 rare medicinal plants that it has transferred from the wild. But, far from responding to its natural surroundings and inspirational neighbours, the Embelia ribes sulked in silence and didn’t seem at all impressed.
This is when Ganesh Babu, a gifted botanist at FRLHT, tried talking to the plant, persuading it to wake up and grow. And suddenly one day a leaf appeared. Ganesh was overjoyed. He had sensed that the plant was seeking attention. The single leaf, as he saw it, was a signal that the plant had been feeling neglected and wanted to be pampered.
Says Ganesh: “When I saw the leaf, I gathered all our gardeners and I appreciated the plant in front of them. After that appreciation, more leaves came forth.”
Ganesh decided to give the plant yet more importance: “I brought professors and spoke glowingly about the plant to them. Then I brought our director. After this, the plant began growing like anything. It means the plant knew the kind of importance and appreciation it was getting. After that, it became the biggest climber in our garden.”
Sometime later, a PhD scholar at the Trans-Disciplinary University, which is located on the FRLHT campus, brought 100 saplings of Embelia ribes and planted them in many places, including on the campus. Ninety-nine of the saplings died after which Ganesh was asked to save the last surviving one by talking to it.
“I think they were being sarcastic,” recalls Ganesh. “But I took up the challenge. I planted the sapling and began talking to it. It grew rapidly. It is still there as a huge climber on the last building of our campus.”
What is it that Ganesh says to plants that makes them respond so glowingly? “Like a child, a plant needs care and appreciation. When there is no attention, the plant loses the will to live and grow,” says Ganesh. “When a plant feels, Okay, someone is there who cares for me and expects something from me, it thrives,” he explains.
But what are Ganesh’s conversations with plants like? “It is as I would talk to a child. I tell them, you are so beautiful, you are so purposefully here in this garden. You are invaluable and people will appreciate you for your amazing qualities. From you, people will learn about our traditional medical knowledge. And you will be an example for the rest of the world to see. So you should survive, you should flourish, you should reciprocate all this love. And they do that,” he says.
Ganesh cites how he went to Madurai last year to develop the garden of Prof. D. Winfred Thomas. It was Thomas who had ignited Ganesh’s interest in botany when he was at the American College in Madurai in his undergraduate years.
“They had planted Bauhinia purpurea and even after two years, it was looking like a stick. It hadn’t sprouted at all. The general advice was to get rid of the plant, but Prof. Thomas asked me to talk to the plant and make it grow. I went to his garden in Madurai and talked to it and, believe me, or not, within two months it started fruiting. Now it has become a tree. It all happened during the pandemic,” recounts Ganesh.
Ganesh talks to his plants in Tamil. But in which language should one talk to a plant? Does it have to be the local language? Is language at all important?
“No. Language is not important because language is converted into feelings and vibrations. For plants, language translates into your vibrations and they respond. This is what I have experienced,” says Ganesh.
For Ganesh, attitude and intent are everything. Scholars at a government Ayurveda college in Karnataka told him they had planted seeds for a hundred Ashoka trees, but none had germinated.
“I asked if they had talked to the seeds. They asked me what I meant. Why did they need to talk to Seeds? I told them if you just put a seed into the soil without a higher intention of seeing it grow into a tree, it is the equivalent of burying the seed. But if you talk to the seed and have the expectation that it will become a tree then that is sowing a seed which will germinate,” explains Ganesh.
“When they started talking to the seeds while sowing them, they grew into trees. Now there are 20 to 30 Ashoka trees in the Ayurveda college’s garden,” says Ganesh.
“Whether you sow a seed or bury it depends on your intent,” he explains. “When you don’t have intent the message to the seed is that it is being buried and it doesn’t bother to sprout.”
Bonding with a plant and sensing its needs is important. Plants are believed to respond to music, but once again it is the intent and the connection with the plant that matter. It makes the difference between the plant liking the music or rejecting it as noise.
Ganesh’s relationships with his plants are intuitive and subliminal. He says he instinctively knows their needs, be it water or emotional pampering.
“It is like taking care of a child,” he emphasizes time and again. “A mother doesn’t need research to tell her when her child is hungry or in need of attention.”
Ganesh recalls trying to grow a medicinal plant for six months on the FRLHT campus without it responding. Then he checked out the original habitat of the plant, Decalepis hamiltonii, and found several surrounding succulent species as well as boulders.
“So, then I thought, why don’t we imitate this? I brought the same kind of boulders and the same type of succulent plants to our garden and within three months the plant reached 40 to 50 feet. The plant required its microhabitat conditions,” says Ganesh.
He also gives the example of Frerea Indica, which is a small plant with beautiful brown flowers that grows only in Maharashtra. Ex situ the plant needs the company of thorny plants called Euphorbia nivulia and Euphorbia neriifolia and some other species from its original habitat to prosper. People tend to remove the thorny plants, thinking they will harm Frerea indica, but it is the other way around.
“There are certain plants that demand biotic associations and microclimatic conditions. They don’t grow if you don’t put in their proximity the plants they associate with in nature,” explains Ganesh.
“Not only do plants like to be talked to, they also talk to one another and cure one another. They are networked with one another. It is how the plant community lives,” says Ganesh.
“Once we remove a particular plant, the whole ecosystem gets disturbed. That is the network,” explains Ganesh emphasising interdependence.
For more, read https://www.civilsocietyonline.com/cover-story/ganesh-babus-secret-life-in-the-wilds/an article
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