Thus Spoke the Plant

These are genuine first-hand accounts from a scientist's research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Monica Gagliano, a research scientist in evolutionary ecology, encourages us to rethink plants as people--beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The book draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it. What would plants have to say and most importantly, what would happen if we listened and followed their suggestions? These questions usher in an awkward tension between our existing belief system and a new emerging paradigm. This book relieves this tension by freeing the expression of a distinctive perspective--that of plants--on a world that urgently needs to hear it.