People get so used to certain phenomena and things that they often do not even realize their importance and significance. We are all accustomed to such a simple thing as plants, and do not pay attention to their existence at all. That is, they exist, as it were, in parallel to us, and in fact we never think about them.
Serious science also took an ordinary interest in plants - it studied the forms of flowers, the methods of their reproduction, the nature of the fibers of their stems and the climatic conditions in which they grow. The idea that plants are more than just a stem, root and leaves came into the minds of scientists relatively recently.
It began in 1933, when the German botanist Oskar Drude first tried to connect his newly invented new generation encephalography sensors to the stem of a plant. He even managed to fix something, but nothing is known about the results of the experiment.
Everything completely changed after about twenty years, when the British biochemist Hans Kornberg, conducting experiments to study the conductivity of plant fibers, observed an interesting phenomenon. In one room there were two boxes with flowers planted in them. One of the plants was connected to the measuring device and the other was not. At the last moment, it turned out that part of the stem had rotted away from him and it was not suitable for experiments. Kronberg cut off part of the stem with scissors, and after about a minute the device connected to the first plant recorded some kind of signal.
The scientist immediately realized that his action with the scissors and the change in the conductivity of the plant adjacent to the injured one are interrelated. In addition, by the polarity of the signal recorded in the plant, he was able to determine its direction - from the foliage to the root. Over time, developing this theory, scientists found out that plants are quite capable of communicating with each other by releasing special aromatic substances in negligible concentrations. It is so small that people not only cannot smell the smell, but even fix it with devices.
And, nevertheless, trees communicate with each other: they warn each other about the appearance of parasites, report that someone is trying to eat or pluck them, there is even a special signal with which trees warn of a fire.
What is surprising is that in some trees, before the forest fire front reaches them, an abundant "drawing" of moisture from the soil begins; trees with a lot of liquid in the trunk can even survive a fire successfully. All this indirectly confirmed the theory of trees communicating with each other through a chemical communication channel through the air. Thus, a gap was made in that trees are passive idols, only capable of drawing moisture from the earth and producing sugar from carbon dioxide. Now the plant world began to be presented in a completely different form: despite the "standing" lifestyle, plants turned out to be very interactive creatures, capable of communicating with their own kind.
But that was not all. It turned out that paranormal phenomena are not alien to the plant world. As usually happens in such situations, it turned out almost by accident.
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In the mid-70s of the 20th century in the Soviet Union, a group of scientists led by Academicians Vladimir Ioffe and Valentin Kuzmin conducted experiments to study biochemical processes in plants. In parallel, experiments were carried out in a neighboring laboratory to study the effect of high-frequency currents on the functioning of the frog brain. Sometimes frogs could not stand the experiments and died. When the frogs died, some of the devices used by biochemists recorded bursts of activity in plants.
At that time, belief in mystical or paranormal phenomena (especially among scientists) was not encouraged, and Ioffe suggested that the obtained data be considered as a hindrance aimed at the devices and should not be mentioned in official reports. However, behind the scenes, he discussed this idea and recalled these experiments more than once, until the very end of his life.
An American biochemist who was in the USSR, Rodbell, who later received the Nobel Prize, once talked with Ioffe and learned about the interesting results of an experiment when plants reacted to the death of frogs in the next room.
He reported the results of this conversation to Douglas Cook, a botanist who was studying microbiology at the time. Cook set up several experiments with various plants and animals and confirmed the results of Ioffe's experiment.
Moreover, none of the scientists who repeated these experiments could find a channel through which information and biological death of an animal would be transmitted to plants around. And what kind of channel could it be? What information was it supposed to be? In any case, as a result of the experiment, electrical impulses appeared in certain parts of the plant stem or tree trunk, the time of appearance of which exactly coincided with the moment of death of the animal nearby.
The phenomenon of memory of perennial trees deserves special attention. We all know that if you cut down a tree, you can see annual rings on the cut. Their appearance is explained quite simply - warm and cold seasons alternate in a year, and the rhythm of life (and growth) of a plant depends on temperature, therefore, once a year, plant growth practically stops, and then continues again. Thus, by the number of annual rings, you can calculate the number of years lived by the plant.
However, as Canadian scientists have found out, in annual rings trees can store information about events that have occurred around them, or about those events that neighbors reported to them. So, for example, while examining the legendary Methuselah (a living tree, whose age is estimated at 4000 years), scientists discovered in its annual rings the remains of substances with which the trees "warn" each other about fires. According to these data, Methuselah survived about 12 fires, which is confirmed not only by the charred areas found on it, but also by excavations in Shulman's Grove, the place of its growth.
Mysteries of flora and fauna are often more interesting than the world of space or human history. Studying the life of plants or "our lesser brothers" you can discover many amazing secrets that can later help humanity to achieve their goals.
