The Wisdom Of Wild Flora

After recording the songs of over 100 wild plants, I discovered my Wild Flora Music project was teaching me all manner of lessons I hadn't anticipated. This is the beginning of a conversation with wild plants and my opportunity to share some of the wisdom of our wild flora.

Transcript

In the summer of 2024,

I finally began a new project that had been bubbling away in the back of my mind for a couple of years.

I had been getting progressively more frustrated by how invisible the natural world is to people.

We are increasingly living in environments that disconnect us from nature,

Whether that is in our hermetically sealed,

Air-conditioned homes,

Or speeding along inside the silos of large cars that block out the sounds and smells of the landscape.

How could we value something,

Or many things,

That touch our senses when our lives are designed to protect us from the very thing that sparks that connection?

We cannot value something we don't see,

Let alone feel.

Much of nature is invisible to humans.

I find this particularly true of the many tiny plants that go unnoticed,

Yet play a vital role in the health of our ecosystems.

As someone always looking for ways to change the status quo,

I asked myself how I could contribute to people noticing and valuing natural life.

I decided I would give wild plants a voice through their songs.

I wanted to showcase the diversity of energy wild plants bring into our environments,

And put it in front of people so they could hear that energy for themselves.

If a song touches you,

Your relationship with the plant is going to be forever changed.

I wasn't going to cherry-pick the most beautiful plants,

I was going to give them all a voice.

But I was going to choose wild plants in their natural habitat,

Because I knew that their songs would be very different in a community over being in isolation.

When my plant music device arrived,

I headed straight out to my garden,

To my silver birch,

Whom I'd promised would be the first.

I had no idea what I was doing,

But the tree did not let me down.

Throughout the summer of 2024,

I had recorded over 100 species of wild plant in my local area,

From orchids to oaks.

I began the summer thinking I would have a series of beautiful musical tracks that would help people fall in love with nature.

That isn't quite how it turned out,

And as always I discovered a whole swathe of things that weren't even on my radar.

As autumn is closing in,

I have been reflecting on all that I have learned from the plants in the process,

And what extraordinary wisdom they have to share.

The first lesson,

An important one for me personally,

Was achieving full presence with the plant.

I'm a fidgety person,

I like to move a lot,

My mind is always racing ahead.

Part of this comes from always having animals in my life and needing to look after them,

And also from being a parent and always switched on to what other people need of me,

And part of it is just me.

The technology works in such a way that I can't move away from the plant,

I have to be with the plant while it sings.

Those first few recordings where I had to stand or sit for more than a few minutes were,

Frankly,

Tough,

But then I had the most extraordinary experience with the modest ribwort planting.

I found a healthy,

Robust plant growing in a mini-meadow,

And sat down in the sun to record.

As chance would have it,

I stumbled upon the perfect combination of sounds for this plant.

I was transported.

Around me,

In the build-up to the general election,

Doorstep campaigners were swarming the area,

And it was far from serene.

But I was in a place of complete calm.

I did not want it to end.

That little plant had a mighty message through which I was able to let go and just be present.

Productivity is a strong narrative in our societies.

It runs like a polluted river through our thinking,

And forces us to always be doing,

Never being.

I knew that there was no way I could make this project work unless I addressed this echo in my own behaviour.

I let the plants show me the way.

The plants that have taught me the most about being present have not been the ones I might have expected,

Had I attached any expectations to the process.

But they have certainly surprised me.

I have learnt that only through being fully present and open with our senses can we begin to access that deeper wisdom of living life more naturally.

This sensory opening is our way to leaving behind the thinking and behaviour which have disconnected us from the natural world,

And left us feeling less than unhealthy and unhappy at a collective level.

My early forays were focused on learning how to use the device.

I chose a device that had a lot of musical flexibility,

But that meant learning how to use it.

My first twenty or so recordings had me totally in my head trying to work out how to get something that sounded pleasant to the human ear.

They weren't a resounding success.

I went out into my garden to record some of our herbs to work it out,

Choosing one of my favourites,

Lemon balm.

It was okay,

But nothing spectacular.

Then I picked rosemary and got quite the shock.

I guess I had been expecting lots of lovely,

Sweet,

Melodic sounds to burst forth from the plants and captivate the world.

I was not expecting a guttural rumble so deep it shook me.

It was the wake-up call I needed to get out of my head and use my intuition to find the sounds that worked for the individual plant.

I didn't know it at the time,

But it was also my first encounter with the sound of the earth moving through a plant.

After many recordings,

It has become clear that there is a deep,

Deep rhythm that moves through all plants,

And that this rhythm is almost identical.

It sits underneath the song and it's really only heard when the song pauses.

Almost all plants have pauses in their songs.

Trees are the most obvious with long pauses between musical phrases.

And it's at this point that the rhythm of the earth can be heard.

I wouldn't describe it as a musical experience,

Hence my shock with rosemary,

But it holds a lot of meaning.

The silence that is not silent opens up a deep connection to the life force of the planet.

And that silence also speaks of the natural rhythm of life and how important it is to switch off regularly in your day.

Much like Presence,

This silence reconnects each of us to more wisdom,

Insight and creative impulses.

It's the fuel of life and expression.

When I began recording,

I made the assumption that small plants would have weaker signals and bigger plants stronger ones.

This was one of the reasons I chose to record this video.

It was one of many assumptions to be proved wrong.

Trees,

Despite their size,

Often appear to struggle to maintain a connection.

But after a few recordings,

I realised that the energy moves through the trees in waves.

Because of their size,

Those waves are more intermittent.

In the same way a whale or elephant's heart beats more slowly than a mouse,

The song of the tree moves slowly.

I also came to feel those waves of energy to be like the movement of wind in the branches.

The song would be strong and then stop,

Because it had moved to a different part of the tree.

As you can hear in this section of the Cesar Oak song.

In contrast,

Smaller plants would be much more consistent in sound,

But that rhythm was still there,

Just at faster intervals.

The apparent pauses are generally shorter in smaller plants.

And those that might be considered weeds,

Especially those with deep root systems,

Have incredibly strong life force that translates into a constant song,

As the Broadleaf Dock demonstrates.

With all this said,

The song is the song and when it is done,

The plant makes it clear there is no more to be said.

I have experienced this many times when the plant simply says,

I'm done.

The most amusing of this was the Humble Knotgrass.

After singing boldly for around eight minutes,

It finished its song with a high note,

And after that there was silence.

I remember contemplating how boldly this plant had made the statement that the work was complete,

And what we can all learn from knowing when our creative works are done.

There is a phenomenon in trees called crown shyness,

And you can see this in woods where there are clear gaps between the individual trees.

Plants can also exhibit song shyness.

In these cases,

The sound emanating from the plants can be barely audible to begin with,

But then the most amazing thing happens.

The plant hears its own song and suddenly surges.

There is a feedback loop where the louder the music becomes,

The more boldly the plant sings,

And sometimes the pace increases too,

As can be seen with White Briony.

Just like humans,

Plants respond to being seen.

I often talk to the plants while I'm recording,

Or stroke their leaves,

And they always respond with a certain energy.

Listening back to the raw tracks,

I can confirm that some of these responses are best not listened to with headphones on.

Tiny plants have the power to blow out your eardrums.

The impact of being seen and acknowledged creates surges in life force for the plants,

Just as it does for humans.

For me,

This was a powerful reinforcement of my intention for the project,

To demonstrate how important it is to really see the natural world and come to value it.

For the most part,

I have headed off to record plants in the sunshine.

There is nothing so serene as sitting barefoot in a field listening to plant music.

I can highly recommend it.

But recently I headed out into the pouring rain to record one plant that grows mostly on the road edges.

I knew that it was at risk of becoming chewed up as the ground gets wetter,

So didn't want to wait.

The pounding raindrops on my hood meant I couldn't hear the sounds clearly,

But what I could hear sounded promising.

When I listened back in the dry,

What I heard was a musical car crash.

The notes were jumping all over the place and it sounded just like raindrops.

A few days later,

I headed back out to the same fat hen plant in the sunshine and the sounds were so different.

Recording by the roadside,

I also witnessed first hand how the signal completely dropped each time I heard the sound of a car crash.

It sounded like it was coming from the other side of the road.

Recording by the roadside,

I also witnessed first hand how the signal completely dropped each time a car drove by.

When the rumble had passed,

The song would begin again.

I will leave you to consider what this means,

But it is clear that plants are impacted by what is happening around them and it causes surges and drops in energy.

Most of my recordings this summer have been opportunistic.

I've set off without a plan and the plants that wish to sing have called me,

And some I have gone searching for.

On balance,

The ones that I have sought out have not been entirely successful.

The results were interesting,

But kind of challenging to listen to.

The ones that have called me have generally resulted in a clearer song that is more harmonic in nature,

Which is a lesson in itself of listening to the conversation the plants wish to have with us.

I have a list of plants,

Around about 120 of them so far,

That I would love to record next year,

But I have learnt to respond to the moment.

I don't doubt that I will come across all kinds of plants that want to be heard and I will let myself be guided by them.

My list is perhaps a call to be called by the plants.

This project is morphing as it goes.

What started out as a musical endeavour,

Somewhat daunting for a non-musician,

Has become a conversation with energy.

I quickly realised that plants do not always create melodies.

The tracks that I've created with the plants highlight rhythm and energy.

If you approach it as a conversation,

It becomes easier to listen and respond at a sensory level.

And that's the point.

Nature connects with us at a sensory level and when we open our senses,

The conversation will take us in so many unexpected directions.

Many of the instruments I can choose from simply do not suit the rhythm or energy of wild plants.

I have learnt to make my choices intuitively in response to what I hear.

Interestingly,

As I have got more intuitively led,

I have had to edit less and less.

Many of the tracks from the latter part of the summer have required no editing at all.

Another interesting phenomenon that has occurred for me with so many plant conversations.

I have found myself intuitively identifying plants I've never seen before.

I have recorded quite a few that I had never come across,

Or perhaps looked closely enough to see,

That I could instinctively identify before whipping out my wildflower key.

Each recording has sparked something new,

Maybe an observation of what can be learned through simple connection with nature,

Or ideas for new recordings.

I just hope that this opens people up to the mysteries of nature.

And I see real hope in that when people stop to ask me why I'm attached to a plant,

Their eyes open so wide when I explain how the plant is making music.

And I'm not seeking to reinterpret the plant to make music fit for human ears,

But introducing the sounds of nature as they are,

As best as I am able.

The sounds of the plants are energy turned sensory.

Through our senses we can relearn the art of speaking nature's language,

And through this find hope and promise for the future.

And I will leave you with a glimpse into the energy of mugwort.

Reviews

Most of my life I was oblivious to the natural world. Your contribution to it is stunningly beautiful. Thank you❣️

An exceptional presentation 👏 Polly this is so gently eye and ear opening. I loved every minute. It's so interesting about the pauses in large versus small plants. And how the rhythm of the earth is present in each plant helps me to feel that within my own system. Thank you for this deeply touching conversation which I shall return to again 🙏