Do yourself a favor: Sit down in a forest, roll up a fat spliff of smokable herbs, light up, and listen. 

Hear that? You can practically hear the plants talking all around you. 

OK, maybe that’s your imagination, especially if those herbs contained Cannabis in an herbal tobaccoless-spliff. And yet you might be onto something while clearly being on something.

Though too subtle for the naked ear, the plants are indeed yapping away – communicating through scents, chemicals, gases, and even sounds. It turns out herbs and plants are chatterbugs, and they’ve got a lot on their minds – predators, soil conditions, even the weather. And yes, they’re talking some serious shit.

No, really. Plant communication was first discovered in 1983 by two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, who realized young male saplings bitten by insects release spurts of chemicals into the air that can be detected by other plants.

Known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), these chemicals are a blend of organic molecules — alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, and esters. Some of these chemicals are actually perfumes that attract predators to eat the insects munching on the plants, for example, wasps that eat aphids that would otherwise decimate the plant. 

And it’s more than just chemicals – plants are also communicating through sound. Researchers have found that special microphones used to snoop in on bat calls can also hear plants. A variety of plant species emit ultrasonic popping sounds when they’re stressed. These sounds can be heard by moths, bats, and mice. Scientists are listening to this plant “speech” to find new ways to diagnose and treat plant illnesses without touching the plant.

When researchers first began uncovering plant communication in the early 1980s, it was widely debunked by the established scientific community. The research was statistically flawed or too artificial, essentially irrelevant in the sacred halls of science, according to those pipe-smoking, elongated Colonel-Mustard-mustached wide-jowled brainiacs who get to decide the things that matter in this world.

But lately, plant communication has been making one hell of a comeback, kinda like the Pixies who broke up in the early-90s only to roar back and rock our asses off in a new millennium. 

Repeated testing in labs, forests, and fields confirms that yes, plants do communicate to themselves, other plants, and even animals in the wild. Ecologist Richard Karban estimates that 40 out of 48 studies of plant communication confirm that other plants detect airborne signals and react in kind.

“The evidence that plants release volatiles when damaged by herbivores is as sure as something in science can be,” Martin Heil, an ecologist at the Mexican research institute Cinvestav Irapuato, told Quanta Magazine. “The evidence that plants can somehow perceive these volatiles and respond with a defense response is also very good.”

The debate is no longer about whether plants communicate but why and how they do it.

“It’s pretty spectacular what plants do,” plant signaling pioneer Ted Farmer of the University of Lausanne told Quanta Magazine. “The more I work on them, the more I’m amazed.”

And we’re just at the beginning of the discovery. The more researchers learn, the more nature appears to be totally stoned off her gourd, dude.

“I think we’re seeing that the complexity [of communication] is just as great with plants as it is with animals,” says Mamta Rawat, a microbiologist and program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF), told National Geographic. “I think there’s a lot more to be learned—we’re just touching the tip of the iceberg.”

… working as one being – breathing, bleeding, becoming.

Scientists are already learning that plants may be intelligent or at the very least conscious – capable of curiosity, kinship, bonding, and even pain. Plants talking shit isn’t that far off.

The science of plant communication reveals a stunning web of interconnectedness in nature, showing that forests and ecosystems function like vast, intelligent networks. Through underground fungal mycorrhizal networks, trees and plants exchange nutrients, warn each other of threats, and even support weaker members of their communities. 

This hidden language of the natural world reminds us that life is not isolated but deeply intertwined, like the connections within our own bodies and the human symbiosis that binds society. Understanding plant communication challenges the idea of nature as separate from us – it’s actually an intricate, living system of which we are inseparable.

So think about that the next time you light up a spliff of smokable herbs and inhale. These plants and herbs are beings, part of the natural kingdom – and you are too. Celebrate your place in a conscious, aware nature that communicates, bleeds, and heals.

Whenever you feel lost or lonely, know there is an abundance of natural interconnection surrounding you all the time. Together with plants, trees, and all the other beings on this beautiful Earth, we are one consciousness – one breathing, bleeding, weeping being.

Welcome to your ancestors. They’re plants.