The secret life of plants
A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man
by Peter Tompkins, Christopher Bird · first published 1973
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4recommended by
8HN commenters
2016–2026first – last mentioned
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"A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man"--Jacket subtitle.
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For those who would like to read more about this, I enjoyed The Secret Life Of Plants by Thompkins and Bird https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99442.The_Secret_Life_of...
on “What if plants were animals like any other?” ↗Ah well, time will tell, I imagine. :-) If you want weird, edge-of-reality stuff that's fun and mostly safe I recommend the book "The Secret Life of Plants" ("Life" not "Lives", that's a different book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants
on “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox” ↗The book "The Secret Life of Plants" is a very interesting ones and sheds interesting light on many unknown features of plants. But it requires an open mind, not something most acedemics are known for :)
on “The mystery of the mimic plant (2022)” ↗"The Secret Life of Plants" is a great book on this subject.
on “Plants don’t have ears. But they can still detect sound” ↗…allergic to entitlement, and boy, if you want entitlement, look to the Brits at the end of the imperialist era. Ed Catmull -- Creativity, Inc. Read this for work. Enjoyable but ehh. Peter Tompkins -- The Secret Life of Plants (unfinished). I tried but couldn't get past the rampant bad science. Steve Martin -- Born Standing Up. This was a fun profile of a comic that I appreciate; if you're already a fan it's worthwhile, otherwise…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗> Peter Tompkins -- The Secret Life of Plants (unfinished). I tried but couldn't get past the rampant bad science. I read this book as well when I was younger (in my "new age" period), and I agree with your opinion.
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗"The Secret Life of Plants" -Tompkins & Bird (1973)
on “Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative” ↗…"vicious, antagonistic" plants. (Fair warning dude, you might not want to engage with me in re: plants, et. al. I'm a weirdo that believes in human-plant telepathy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants ...or don't, eh? To be sure some of what's in that book is BS, but not IMO the parts about communicating with plants. YMMV. Cheers.)
on “Subscription services for plants” ↗…to develop intuition/divination, eh? I think it would be much easier to make a machine that allowed the plants and soil itself to communicate the optimal times for events. Do you have a copy of "The Secret Life of Plants"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants > Why can’t this be done with Astrology? If you mean letting astronomical data be part of the inputs to your Bayesian AI then by all means…
on “Ask HN: Help me learn astrology in 2020” ↗>Discussions of plant consciousness are nearly always dominated by very loud self-proclaimed skeptics I have to say I have had the opposite experience. Ever since "The Secret Life of Plants" the average person is much more open to the idea that plants have some kind of conscious experience than is warranted by our current understanding of them. Myths about plants growing better when exposed…
on “The Thinking Plant's Man (2025)” ↗