Plant communication

I have lived on a wooded acreage in southern Oregon for the past 12 yrs., and spend a lot of time out in it - consciously connecting with the trees, expressing my deep gratitude for being able to share this place with them.  

I read about Findhorn back in the late 60's and have worked at communicating with plants since then, never feeling I was terribly successful in a way I imagined it should happen.   Woods have been my favorite environment since I was a small child but this is the first time I have actually lived for any time in a woodland, DOING things to it and with it, spending innumerable hours in it, meditating, reading, writing, cleaning up debris, choosing which trees go and which stay, etc etc...  

My meditation group and I have been reading the book "Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm" by Stephen Harrod Buhner, and it has encouraged me to work at deepening my relationship with the trees and plants here in new ways. And so I have been asking for their support or guidance in various areas of my life and working at truly LISTENING to them. Last evening as I sat on a stump in the middle of the woods I was overcome by a deep feeling of being surrounded by a loving community of friends. It was such a moving and powerful experience that it brought me to tears. And I realized that the reason I never feel ALONE on the land when there are no other humans here - is because the trees and plants have been there for me all along.

I know some people feel that this is a weird and woo-woo subject, but I have a feeling that because we humans spent most of our time on this earth living among trees and other plants, using them for food and clothing, medicine and shelter, sharing the very air we breathe, the water and the micro-organisms, that we had a very different relationship with them than we do now - in this mechanistic culture where plants are thought of as "things" - resources to be used for human benefit.

Perhaps one of the answers to the incredible climate crisis we are in the midst of, is to begin consciously working with the living intelligent beings that share the living earth with us...

What do you think? What is your experience in your relationship with plants?

I really like you do that, listening to the trees, i've seen that stuff when i was young and doing psychedelics. The trees were fantastic! Waving there branches wildly and really teaching us stuff in a language without words.
Now i'm middle aged ,too busy being busy. Sometimes i sit at a tree and rest my head against the trunk, an exchange of energy takes place i feel better, calmer after that. I hope the tree does too. I know i should do these things more often, take the time to feel and being part of nature.
Do you think they have a human-like consciousness? Personality? Or are they more in a sleepy/meditative state of "mind"?

Hugo - I have no way to truly know the answer to those questions, but the folks who started Findhorn certainly were given a vast array of very specific answers to the questions that were asked. They were able because of the cooperation of the spirits or "devas" of the plants around them to build an incredible community over the last 60 yrs. that has grown into an internationally known eco-village and conference center.  And the whole thing was started by LISTENING to the advise of plants.

One of the things that they were "told" by these plant "devas" was that it would be good if they set aside a part of their land specifically for the "nature spirits" to inhabit - with NO interference from humans - or human activity of any kind. And so wherever we lived the first thing we did was find an area to designate "off limits" to humans...  

Perhaps if we humans - with great respect and humility - open ourselves to hearing or taking in - in whatever way we can - the wisdom of the plant kingdom - it will again begin to trust us and to open itself to us.  We are so arrogant and unthinking in our actions toward nature that it is no wonder that it has shut down communications with us.  We have this amazing belief that humans are the wisest beings on the planet - and so it doesn't occur to us that a lowly plant or fungi or insect could have any wisdom to offer us.   We are willing to talk TO plants or animals - but we rarely put any energy in to LISTENING... and we are certainly willing to USE them in all the ways humans use plants...

I truly believe that if we could start a movement of humans willing to work WITH nature - be open to natures guidance - we might find our way out of the terrible mess we now find ourselves in.

Hi Barb, welcome to Permies!

This is certainly not weird and woo-woo to me, and I believe I understand what you mean. What I was a kid, the woods was my favorite place also. I grew up around the corner from a nature preserve called Radnor Lake in Nashville. My dad would take us kids there and we would walk the nature trails. I would later ride my bike there, then drive there when I got a car. There is something magical about the woods, especially healthy woods, with little or no human activity, and the forrest grows and lives as a community of old trees, young trees and understory plants and all the creatures and critters that make their home there. I think there is spirit in plants and animals, something more than just the water and other molecules that make something living. Just last month I read an article on plant sentience by Andre Leu that I found fascinating, and I think you'll enjoy it. Here's the link: https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/voices-of-eco-agriculture/opinions/plant-sentience-and-the-impossible-burger/

I had a similar Experience as Hugo, seeing the forest of mostly pines as individuals and wondering in that moment how I could not see their uniqueness before.

There have been studies done by a man who worked with lie detectors. He decided to clip the machine onto a plant leaf (a dragon plant i believe)...yes here it is *ty google* https://harvardsciencereview.com/2014/01/22/the-secret-life-of-plants/

plants share nutrients and even decide which plant will be given to the pests so as not to over-produce natural pesticide and have resistance build-up in the plant community.

plant communities are developed and established in ways that go beyond random seed dispersal by animal, wind, water, etc... seemingly 'calling in' the necessary species.

Plants can read our minds and used to us. They do communicate with us. It may be a thought that pops into your head while in the forests. May be not a voice but simply a thought. Trees/Plants simply don't have the same organs as we do, but they share a bunch of our DNA.

I believe simply sitting/being in nature/forest without active thinking and after some time simply looking around and listening to the thoughts that pop in can be a start to communicating with nature...of course hugging, thanking verbally can work as well in one way

I have also felt communication with plants.

Part of it might be projection and imagination, but if it helps, no problem to do this.

Then I have had flashes or images coming, like a special suffering mixed with an image of an animal wound while seeiing a new cut of plants or trees.

I have leaned against a mother faya tree while talking about the forest, and felt myself suddenly lifted by energy.


I can also feel their behavior, like what they like, how they group or grow alone, differences between species… I can feel they need water, and only then try to look better and interprete the leaves. When you kow a species, you know when you see one, if it has had enough or not of sun, water, or too much…

So we need to know them in order to have some real communication.

Xisca Nicolas --- Thank you for your post! You truly do seem to have maintained your ability to sense and feel what plants are communicating to you.    AND - You have hit on something that Stephen Buhner talks about in his book Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm when you say "Part of it might be projection and imagination,"   I believe that much of the problem is that we have been trained to not trust our "imagination"... It has been ridiculed and relegated to a childhood abberation... "It's just your imagination" we are told... as though that is a bad thing - an unreliable thing - something not to trust, and so over time we shut it down - hide it away - even from ourselves.   Perhaps as Buhner suggests we need to begin to honor and support it again - to celebrate it and activate it - because it lives in the part of us that can understand what the trees are saying to us...       It's the tool we need to open the door in that realm where we can converse with other life forms.  Until then we are deaf to it all it seems.

Maybe talking about it as often as we can - as a sane, intelligent, ADULT thing to do - will help to move it out of the realm of foolish, woo-woo weirdness in so many modern Western minds, and back into the realm of solution and normality!

Ben Gorski - thanks!

Your comment "I believe simply sitting/being in nature/forest without active thinking and after some time simply looking around and listening to the thoughts that pop in can be a start to communicating with nature..." is great... and exactly how we begin to train ourselves to HEAR..  

I believe that plants and trees will respond to our feelings about them as well and especially a feeling of gratitude for the role they play in our collective lives.  

And perhaps if we begin to ask "What can I do to help?" maybe we will be shown solutions that we may have never thought of on our own.

Barb Allen, you have a way to answer that seems to be inspired by plants… A form of mirroring... or it is the miracle from plants, because we have to use our imagination and recall what we feel when we are with plants.


My welcoming of imagination comes from my somatic basis... it is about the ANS - Autonomic Nervous System - and I think that our nerves can be like antennas and receive some subtleties. Our nervous system obeys 2 rules:
1) there is no tense, past present or future, as all is felt in present time,
2) and there is no difference between reality and imagination. Or else we would see no interest in a movie!

The ANS is a good way to make see some things are not woo woo but scientific!

and language is many things. People who see their plant dries out and give water do not see that they communicated? You see illness or yellow leaves and you try to guess what to do = what to answer to the plant message!