Book Notes: The Secret Life of Plants
My Short Summary
A recounting of various experiments on plants exploring unusual phenomena and the possibility of plants being sentient.
My Short Take
Interesting and thought-provoking, but unconvincing and a bit of a slog to get through.
Some Rambling
I was really looking forward for this book, but by the end, I have to say I was mostly ready to be done with it. The introduction had me all excited about these new-to-me “discoveries” on plants, but I wasn’t aware when I added it to my wish list that it was published in the 70s. Which isn’t bad in and of itself, but I opened it thinking that it was going to be the latest and greatest on plant studies. Not so much. More “experiments from 50 years ago that had some interesting results.” And it became pretty clear even within the span of the book (to say nothing of the half century that’s passed) that many of the results were largely unrepeatable.
In that way, the book read more like lore than science, and yet … the book is also heavy on the “science talk,” as well as heavy on the details about the scientists themselves, which for me, frankly was boring. I pride myself in being an experienced reader of “dry” books, but I definitely found myself skimming, or wishing I could just read a summary of what experiment’s results, non the backstory of the scientist or detailed descriptions of the equipment used.
Because actually, the results were interesting, if not always convincing. I just thought there was a lot of unnecessary information that wasn’t really relevant to the reason I picked up the book in the first place: plants.
As I described it to my husband: I couldn’t quite figure out who this book was written for. It felt too technical for the layperson, and yet I couldn’t find anything about this book changing the modern scientific community’s understanding of plants beyond “there may be some things we don’t yet know about them?” All that said, I did find it thought-provoking, and I don’t think I’ll ever look at our house plants quite the same way again. But in more the spooky X-Files-esque “The Truth is Out There” kind of way, less “I know a lot of facts about plants now.”
Recommended For
People who love plants (or at least find them interesting) have an aptitude and tolerance for reading a scientific style of writing on a pseudo-science topic.
