Thus Spoke the Plant

A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants

By: Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard - foreword

Narrated by: Julie Slater

Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

An accessible and compelling story of a scientist's discovery of plant communication and how it influenced her research and changed her life.

In this "phytobiography" - a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant - research scientist Monica Gagliano reveals the dynamic role plants play in genuine firsthand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano 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 audiobook 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. 

Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own "voices" and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has reignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.

©2018 Monica Gagliano (P)2019 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

“In this revelatory new book, we are brought into the presence of gifted storytellers in three different forms: a scientist, traditional plant practitioners, and the plants themselves. Gagliano’s discoveries uproot assumptions about the plant world as insensate, revealing their capacities to listen, learn and remember. This is a compelling story of discovery at many levels, simultaneously personal, scientific, and spiritual. It will change the way you see the world.” (Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, SUNY distinguished teaching professor, director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)

“Beautifully written and thought provoking, this book brings to light the relationship of an accomplished evolutionary ecologist deeply rooted in Western science and culture, and some plant species, which guide her through dreams and visions with the support of indigenous wise women and men. An inspiration for those willing to listen to the many voices of nature, living as we are in an animated intelligent world we are rapidly destroying.” (Luis Eduardo Luna, author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism Among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, and coauthor of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman) 

“In part guided by indigenous shamans, in part by the author’s own cultivated receptivity, Gagliano dives into isolation with various plant species which have been recognized as having strong voices that humans can hear. She consults with plants that give specific instructions about how to prove botanical consciousness in both the seen and unseen worlds.” (Kathleen Harrison, MA, ethnobotanist, Botanical Dimensions) 

Slightly disappointed

This book was not exactly unpleasant to listen to, but slightly disappointing as it was not at all that expected. As someone who is a member of an Asian indigenous group with a godmother who was a shaman, I was truly looking forward to this.

I grew up surrounded by plants and in a culture that revered plants thus it was no surprise that I developed a deep love and respect for them. It is in my belief that they are capable of awareness and intelligence we have yet to fully understand and that their world is filled with fascinating secrets to be discovered. Not only that, but plants and all living creatures are interconnected in a very real way. In recent years, there is great progress made in this front by some truly amazing scientists who dared to venture. We now know so much more about plants and their senses and intelligence. This will allow people to rethink plants once again as living beings that they are, endowed with their own unique intelligence and awareness.

This book could have so much potential to convey this truth, yet fell short to do so. Instead, it appears to be filled with the author going on too many psychedelic trips with plants based hallucinogens and conversing with plant spirits—something I didn't expect at all from the premise. Not only that, but the author presented herself as something of the "chosen" one which unfortunately came across too egotistic. The book is filled with a vivid and somewhat tiring description of the psychedelic trips she had gone on peppered with a few of her experiments which I wish she would elaborate on more. In addition to that, she seems to express her own opinion (in a rather preachy manner) on social, political, and economic issues and pass it off as the messages of the plant spirits which I thought to be out of place.

I think plants are wonderful and wise just as they are and we can sense that by being with them and appreciate their ways and their form of intelligence. I don't personally believe we have to go on hallucinogenic trips to be able to sense that. I was hoping this book would enlighten me more on the scientific works being one at the forefront of scientific studies of plant intelligence, behavior, and awareness. And while the author did about a few experiments conducted, it was mostly distracted with her musing.

Having that said, I still appreciate what the author is doing and her contribution to the scientific understanding of plants.

whisper

the story was great, the narrator was fine until she started whispering. unless I had my headphones in I couldn't hear her when she starts whispering. it was really annoying and my volume was all the way up.
but other than that it was good!

Pretentious and hardly scientific...

As far as I have read, this book is essentially a woman's telling of a drug trip she had and her attempts to convince us that this somehow constitutes scientific research and that she is somehow a privileged visionary into the inner thoughts of plants and the lessons they are trying to teach us. If you want to learn about the secret language of plants, I suggest you go watch a David Attenborough film.

Excellent book

I’ve been searching for such a book for a long time. It came as a gift of knowledge and inspiration to continue the path of realisation and of sharing the experience that we are one with nature. I strongly recommend it to anyone.

Great mix of real science and shamanic journeying.

As others are burning and annihilating our rain forests Monika is shifting perceptions to a more sane world.

Awe inspiring

Time and time again real knowledge (break throughs) are by those that come at this reality from a different perspective. This is one of those stories. Monica’s experiments may be replicated by millions of students world wide. Regardless of the method of discovery, this is a great story. Listen attentively. Great.

Wonderfully connected! Disconnected narration...

The cadence and inflection of how the book was read was a mismatch. The narrator consistantly mispronounced Lakota words, and scientific terms... They seemed unprepared reading this very personal story. I ended up purchasing a copy of "Thus Spoke the Plant" so I could hear and reference the Author's words and cadence myself.

incredible insights and wisdom

I went looking for a book exactly like this and then found this to my delight.
I am so grateful for this book and its practical insights and generous scientific notations. The unification of deep wisdom and adequate science makes for a magical and nourishing read and I will fully appreciate this book every time I re-read it. Looking for more like this and also from Suzanne Simard!(audio)....

Thank you for your commitment to bring this book / audio through the birth process and into reality and observable quantifiable reality

we are blessed.

An amazing catalog of stories for self-discovery

an amazing story helped me see the inside with my true self would recommend it over and over again

Biologist turns shaman

An interesting take of a woman who seems to make a transition from marine biologist to plant shaman via a series of sensory/cognition experiments on plants and through the use of traditional plant medicines. This book challenges conventional scientific knowledge in a thought provoking manner that Grant's inspiration for shedding the reductionist trappings of materialism in favor of more animistic approach.

not to sure

I actually felt like the writer of the book was high as a kite on drugs for most of her writing and was quite dim to listen to

Astounding

This is a truly amazing collection of story’s and scientific evidence that will blow away your old pre-formed ideas of what you think plants are and what humans relations can be to them!!

10/10

A brief, insightful and much needed dive Into deeper realities

A brave, insightful and much needed dive into deeper realities of the very fabric of life. Monica Gagliano courageously integrates her doctoral and post doctoral studies on plant intelligence with her shamanic and meditative subjective experiences with the plant spirits themselves. In spite of centuries of anthropologists identifying that Shamans derived medicinal concoctions from their conversations with plants, and even published literature showing that much of the medicine found in westernised pharmacies is derived from these very conversations, there have been few serious academics to explore and publish their findings using a combination of the rational mind and the imaginal,intuitive faculties. Monica Gagliano is to be commended for taking this bold and holistic step.

An interesting hybrid

This book is a bit of a platypus. Quasi-academic meets Carlos Castaneda. Gagliano is telling a story that is part anthropological, part academic, part philosophical. It is in turns, fascinating, captivating and nauseatingly twee. Gagliano's writing style swings from comfortably academic to philosophical and then awkwardly motivational. It is an interesting book (and I have bought a copy for my partner as a gift), but not exceptional. As a first book, it shows a writer trying to find her feet. I do hope she keeps at it. I look forward to seeing her style develop.

Drug addled author

was expecting to find out more about the science of plant communication. It is real and recently discovered but this book will leave you thinking it's all about a spiritual journey of narcotics. Not an easy listen either.