Are plants electrical?

[boowdong]

lets just test this!
For how long did the leave you were observing move? If was just a single rapid move ...

On each occasion, several minutes. The movement is very regular. I can't say I have ever seen one start, because it is the motion that attracts the eye. Was that one just starting, or did I just start SEEING it? Dunno.

The amplitude is quite large - so large that one observes in disbelief. It seems to be generally soft green plants, rather than stiff ones.

I've thought of another point that might help in the diagnosis. Mostly the leaf-waving is "up-and-down". But once I saw a large strong leaf, a banana leaf or similar, some 2 ft long, rotating about its longitudinal axis instead. Maybe the leaf was too stiff for up-and-down motion, so the 'energy' translated into 'rotation'. It was moving through about 60 degrees on a cycle time of about 1-2 seconds. As usual, no other leaves were moving, the air being still.

Also, I have never seen any leaf move "side-to-side".

Also, thinking back [and I've never made any contemporaneous records of any of these events], I don't recall ever seeing a potted plant do it - only those planted 'naturally' in beds. Perhaps a potted plant has a different electrical environment.

The classic situation for it is in a botanical garden greenhouse, where the air is still. It is generally humid too, but I have no idea if that is relevant.

If you want to "test this", I suggest the following:

Go to a botanical garden greenhouse. It needs to be quiet. Kids running around shouting, or herds of tourists, are a no-no. Maybe that disturbs the electrical environment, or sound waves are involved, or turbulence, I know not. Find a still, quiet location, and stand still for a while. When all is quiet, relaxed and still, and has been so for a while, your eye might be attracted to movement. It might be a bird ferreting in the undergrowth, but it might be a leaf waving.

If it is, go closer, slowly and quietly, so as not to startle it. With luck, it will keep waving, ever more strongly until it is quite gross. If you are lucky and the plant is at the front of the bed, you will be able to approach within inches. Get down and examine it underneath, checking for silk-pulling spiders, or other unknown cause. Once you are satisfied, you might touch it, and see if it stops. That would be useful to know. You might also capture it on your video camera, and become famous for posting on youtube.

very well said about in some facts, they are saying this really true, i think it , thank for the learning

[solrey]

The first thing I thought about when reading this thread was Kirlian Photography. With KP, it's been proven that plants are aware of their surrounding environment and respond to it. Plants are sentient beings, they just have a different physiology than animals.

* English researchers D.R. Milner and E.F. Smart, experimenting with DC high voltage photography, found there is energy transfer interaction between a freshly picked leaf and a dying leaf picked twenty four hours earlier.
* Plant leaves, when gashed or damaged, show red areas and bubbles.
* Pricking your finger near a plant makes the leaves glow fifty percent brighter. (A finding by soviet scientists)
* Holding one's hand near a plant and suggesting that the hand is warm caused the plant leaves to increase in luminescence. Suggesting that the hand is cold caused a decrease in luminescence of the leaves. (A finding by soviet scientists)
* Dew forms on the leaves of plants in exactly the same locations as the maximum flare patterns shown in the Kirlian pictures of the leaves.
* Kirlian photography was found useful in studying ways of preserving fruit and vegetables.
* Plants with cancer have a very high rate of metabolism, and photograph with much more vivid coronas than healthy ones.
* Male plant stamens always photograph in blue, while the female ovary photographs in gold.
* The viability of seeds can distinguished by the size of the corona. Fertile seeds show much larger coronas than dead seeds. The photography process does no harm to the seeds ability to grow.
* Root tips as they sprout from the seed coat show as brilliant red-pink instead of the seed coat blue. As the roots grow the red-pink stays at the tip, visually indicating where the most active growth is taking place.
* Leaves photographed under the anesthesia of chloroform look very different from control leaves. The bubbles which usually show up inside the leaf show up outside the leaf.
* The use of chloroform on plants increases the chance of capturing the "phantom leaf affect". This is where ten percent or less of the leaf is cut away and a "ghost" image of the missing part shows up on film.

Here's a video about Kirlian photography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDOi1BLoN3U

[perpetual motion]

I have seen this with one of my wifes house plants. It was just around the first of the year, but havent
seen it since. I'll have to ask the wife, but I think it is some kind of cacti. Anyway it is by the
kitchen window and I was watching one to two of the leafs slowly vibrating. Now this was eerie and
exciting at the same time. They did this for maybe three weeks. One would vibrate, then two, but
it was the same ones. I thought that maybe it was the sun, but being winter time up here we don't
see that very often. It was cloudy most of the time, so I ruled that one out. Very strange indeed.

[Influx]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Plants

If you guys read that book, you will forever change your outlook on nature. Not only are plants conductive and generate complex electrical phenomena, the plants are actually sentient and use electricity to communicate! Instantaneously, I might add. Never the less everything in the book must be taken with a grain of salt. On open mind is good, healthy skepticism is better.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 8977368381 here is a Google movie based on the book.

[Influx]

BTW, watch the movie, its old and slow, but worth it, you'll be blown away.