Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins

Reyn’s staff pick:
This book has been described as “A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man.”

Essentially, the subject of the book is the idea that plants may be sentient, despite their lack of a nervous system. This sentience is observed primarily through changes in the plant’s conductivity, as through a polygraph, as pioneered by Cleve Backster. The book also contains a summary of Goethe’s theory of plant metamorphosis.

With that being said, this book is about much more than just plants, and delves quite deeply into such topics as the aura, psychophysics, orgone, radionics, kirlian photography, magnetism / magnetotropism, bioelectrics, dowsing, and the history of science.

It was the basis for the 1979 documentary of the same name featuring the Stevie Wonder soundtrack Journey through the Secret Life of Plants. The film made heavy use of time-lapse photography (where you can see plants grow in a few seconds, creepers reaching out to other plants and tugging on them, mushrooms and flowers popping open, etc.), certainly in order to portray them as animate beings. When the film was released, such images were novelty to the general public.