Singing of Trees, Playing Ballard

The complete stories of J.G. Ballard (for reasons to be made clear below)

By Péter MARTON
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Click-baiting headlines happen in the world of science, too, unfortunately (or — these days — necessarily?). Whatever we make of it, this article, reporting on some recent research, is certainly interesting to read.

As we are informed there, plants are found to emit sounds, picked up "on an ultrasonic sound range between 20 and 150 kHz", inaudible to the human ear. These sounds apparently reflect the conditions that the plant finds itself in:

"Stressed plants were found to emit significantly more sounds than plants from the comfortable control group. Not only were they noisier, but the researchers claim that they gave off different sounds depending on what was happening."

Of course, research into the subject is not exactly new. Here is this article from 2013, which makes it clear that what human beings with empathy would perceive to be a "cry for help" or a way to communicate with the outside world is in fact not so easy to interpret.

' In the case of drought, trees undergoing stress form tiny bubbles inside their trunks, NatGeo explains, which causes a unique ultrasonic noise.
"Imagine using a straw to slurp the last few drops from the bottom of your glass: You have to increase the pressure even more. In drought-stricken trees, this increased pressure can cause the water column to break, allowing dissolved air to form bubbles that block water flow." '

Having said that, we should certainly not let such an opportunity as the discussion of the above articles go by without... mentioning one of my favorite European SF/weird short stories ever: "Prima Belladonna" by J.G. Ballard, from the Vermilion Sands collection (1971).

It features singing flowers and a very spooky and highly remarkable lady in the unforgettable setting of Vermilion Sands "just before the Recess", with "abstract villas and fake palazzos" all "degenerating like an abandoned amusement park", but retaining "enough bizarre extravagance in the air to make one realize that the giants had only just departed."

The seeds of many a good story are planted there!