Rivers Speak – but Do Trees Talk?

On plant communication and human perception

It is now well documented that trees communicate with one another through airborne organic compounds and underground mycorrhizal networks. Over the last decade or so, a new generation of scientists has published groundbreaking research demonstrating that trees are, in fact, intelligent beings—capable of sensing, responding, and adapting in remarkably complex ways.

What is more, it is said that trees possess up to twenty different types of senses, or ways of perceiving and responding to environmental information. Trees detect light, pressure, and physical contact from animals and neighboring plants. They sense vibration. They track time, recognize pathogens, register moisture, temperature, and nutrient availability. Trees transmit electrical impulses through their tissues in response to injury, stress, or environmental change. Much of this sensing does not occur in isolation, but in collaboration—within a living community.

So we know that trees communicate with one another. And although we rarely want to admit it, we communicate with trees, often verbally.

Do you have a tree story?

Is there a particular tree or plant relationship that holds a memory for you?

Can you describe that relationship?

It is difficult to quantify or qualify this kind of connection.

“Life is no mere description. To experience life, to get to the heart of things, to see truly the face of Nature—not just to describe it through the framework of an illusionary, disinterested, objective observer—a nonlinear mode of cognition must be used. For life is, as Frank Herbert realized, always one step beyond logic.”

— Stephen Buhner

If we were to enter into a reciprocal relationship with a tree or a plant, we would need a different way of approaching that relationship—a different kind of sensing.

This idea of relationship that exists one step beyond logic was explored in a recent Emergence Magazine podcast interview with Monica Gagliano, Learning to Listen to Plants. I find it difficult to extract a single quote from the transcript because there is so much to unpack, but this passage offers a small glimpse:

“So if you want to know life, you need to have a taste for it. Literally, you have to eat it, which we do every day—especially with plants. In a way, if we could taste our food with awareness—if we could really feel that we are being remade all the time by these others, so alien and yet capable of creating something so familiar, our own bodies—our knowing would change. It would become more contemplative, less fixed on facts and binaries, less black and white.”

— Monic Gagliano

Still, the question remains: Do trees talk back?

And if so, on what level might this be possible?

The tree huggers among us want to know—do plants and trees initiate conversation? Do they respond to our inquiries? Do they offer knowledge of some kind?

Recently, while researching the relationship between sound and the nervous system, I found myself asking these questions more seriously. I had been experiencing low-level tinnitus after spending too many hours on the computer over several days. At the same time, I was mapping my nervous system—learning how my body responds to the world moment by moment, noticing patterns in sensation, emotion, thought, and behavior. (More on that later.) What I discovered is that the auditory system is deeply intertwined with the nervous system.

And then it occurred to me:

What if trees and plants communicate through imperceptible auditory signals designed to engage the nervous system? Our nervous system.

I began to form a working theory.

Trees emit subtle, low-frequency pulses—vibrations that align with human brainwave states associated with deep relaxation. Our nervous systems naturally synchronize with the rhythms of the natural world, which may explain why spending even fifteen minutes in nature can begin to shift brain activity. While plants produce sounds in frequency ranges that humans cannot consciously hear, it appears that our nervous system can still detect them.

In this way, trees may speak through multiple channels at once: chemically, through airborne compounds; vibrationally, through low-frequency pulses or sound waves; and electrically, through bioelectric signals moving through tissue.

Last year, a plant appeared in my small garden, quietly but insistently asking to be noticed. At first, I paid little attention. Yet its leaves shone in a way that reminded me of people who glow when they carry a secret—a secret not meant for everyone. As time passed, it continued to draw my attention, again and again. This was the first time I had felt this particular type of strong connection to a plant, and I wondered if I had finally lost my grip on reason.

Then came the research. I discovered that this plant holds an important place in herbal medicine—one that would have been particularly beneficial to me at that moment in my life. It became difficult to dismiss the feeling that it had, somehow, reached out.

A year later—and after a deep dive into the emerging field of plant intelligence, a subject only just beginning to be explored by the edges of the scientific community—I find myself sitting with a familiar uncertainty. Sometimes it is difficult to qualify what we know to be true. Perhaps we simply do not yet have the language. Or perhaps this deep connection we share with plants and trees will always resist words.

As technology advances and we move closer to actually hearing what trees may be saying, perhaps we can also learn to refine our own senses—to widen our attention, feel vibration and rhythm, to trust the body’s response over interpretation.

Then maybe—just maybe—we will hear what trees have to say.

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