New Work: Pachamama

While working on new Plant Spirit imagery, I've been listening to some podcasts by Dr. Bruce Damer recounting his new myth about the 'Great Mother' and the evolution of our Earth's biosphere - a hyper-conscious intelligence embodied within and emerging from the neuronal net of plants (root brains), bacteria, and mycelia fungi. (His podcast is called Dr. Bruce's Levity Zone - or you can subscribe via iTunes. Look for episodes from 2013, esp. those recorded at Symbiois festival or at Burning Man.)

Out of this, I began playing with a few elements imaging Pachamama (Great Mother). A couple of examples below.

New research on the 'secret' communication of plants

'Voicemail' discovered in nature: new research on the 'secret' life of plants and insects that bug them - from Permaculture News - Tuesday, 19th June 2012

New research has discovered that insects receive soil messages from the past via changes in fungal community and that plants can indeed communicate with each other.


Insects can use plants as 'green phones' for communication with other bugs. A new study now shows that through those same plants insects are also able to leave 'voicemail' messages in the soil. Herbivorous insects store their voicemails via their effects on soil fungi. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Wageningen University (WUR) discovered this unique messaging service in the ragwort plant. The influential journal Ecology Letters will soon publish these results.

A few years ago, NIOO scientists discovered that soil-dwelling and aboveground insects are able to communicate with each other using the plant as a telephone. Insects eating plant roots change the chemical composition of the leaves, causing the plant to release volatile signals into the air. This can convince aboveground insects to select another food plant in order to avoid competition and to escape from poisonous defence compounds in the plant. But the impact doesn't stop there.

Read more ->

Do Trees Communicate?

Watch this fascinating video.

Another source of information about tree (and plant) inter-species communication that I highly recommend is Stephen Harrod Buhner's "Lost Language of Plants." His work focuses on the pheromone signaling shared within plant communities as well as the impacts of industrial chemicals (medicines, solvents, caffeine, but especially estrogen analogues) which are disrupting such communication pathways - even when found only in trace amounts "in the wild." He also discusses the notion of "mother plants" that act to establish a foothold in an environment, then providing (via chemical extrusions and physical mechanisms such as shade and humidity moderation) a more hospitable ecosystem for a wider plant community to develop and thrive.

King of Mushrooms

From the lovely site Kingdom of Fungi by photographer TAYLOR LOCKWOOD.

Alien Dreamtime

Found image from Tumblr... Wake up to the "felt presence of immediate experience!" From the terence-mckenna-movie blog.

The Fungal Fantastical (with Paul Stamets)

Amazing short video clip with Paul Stamets talking about the complexity of plant communications and how fungi fit in...