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

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)

plants are people too

The story of an interesting research paper, hiding amidst critical theory. Oppressed by the Western imperial mindset, it drowns in ayahuasca.

Unironically I would read another book by the same author that focused on the science, or the philosophy, or even the spirituality of plants.

I might check out another audible about plant psyche that I believe she edited and co-authored. I want to learn about how plants communicate before I learn about the guilt of the post-industrial world wrt plants.

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.

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.

become who we are

Monica gagliano is awesome. intelligent and open minded. this is a sort of paradigm shifting intellectual exercise that the world needs

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.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Monica.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you for taking that "viaje".
Thank you for bringing back this profound message.
Tank you for sharing it with all of us.
🙏🙏🙏♥️🙏🙏🙏

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.

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.

Heart centered plant wisdom

I just finished listening to Monica Gagliano's audiobook, Thus Spoke the Plant. I'm floored by it's beauty and raw vulnerable honesty. I highly recommend this as a healing journey through plant wisdom. 🌱🏞️

Wonderful Debut

This young scientist and budding shaman seems to be in dialogue with Carlos Castenada and Merlin Sheldrake, which gives me a sense of telescoping cross-generational time in listening to this unconventional tale. I look forward to hearing more from this writer as she continues to bridge indigenous and modern worlds that are still very difficult to integrate into boundary-crossing emerging paradigms--which means, I expect, that her progress may guide many who are leading or following the epochal transformation of modern ways of dying into what could potentially still become the living ways of the future.