I was reading about the fact that scientists are saying some plants do scream out of pain. Some scream if they are under watered! Too dry!! Even Plucked leaves cause pain and many other types of grooming can cause pain to many different plants.
This is the very 1st time I've heard about this. It was just on a news feed I was reading.
So I decided to go read more about the subject since I was extremely intrigued by what I had already learned end from that story.
So I have new curious questions for anyone who would care to share you thoughts and opinions on this subject!!!
Do we feel everyday normal grooming plants is a good thing for plants? Such as plucking back dead leaves and keeping the plants neatly groomed is that a GOOD thing for the some plants or would letting nature take it course be better?
I keep my plants very tidy & clean . I often even daily pinch back all dying leaves and blooms so that the plant may use energy to grow more leaves ect, rather than keeping up with old unhealthy and dying leaves ect???
How much does this type of grooming really harm the plant and should I stop grooming SO SO obsessively as I do???
Again. I've always kept my plants tidy but reading all this info makes me feel I am harming my plants!
Should I stop some of the grooming of my houseplants.
I have about 20 ishouse plants! I clean them almost everyday!
By pinching the plant am I causing more pain than necessary? ??
Another question would be is pinching with my tools better than using my fingernails!?!
I literally pinch my plants back with just my nails. I only use a tool if I physically can not do it with my hands..
Again I just want some thoughts on the " screaming plants"

I'm still researching it to learn more just out of my curiosity !
So any articles or information anyone would like to share I'd greatly appreciated it!!!!
Inquiring minds NEED to know! Ha ha

Sorry soo messy!!!!
Happy Gardening laLadies and °and Gentlemen! !!!

The Druids would agree with you I am sure

So how exactly does a plant feel pain? That is my answer.

When I went through the public school system and continued through college and a career in Zoology and Wildlife Management, I was taught that in its very basic sense an organism needed a nervous system and some type of brain to feel pain. There had to be some measurable reaction to a pain stimulus. These systems could in fact be highly developed as in humans or very simple and basic as in tiny organisms like worms, amoebas, etc.
So having said that, where exactly in a plant, in a dandelion, in a violet, in a moss, where are the pain receptors? What serves as a brain or what is the reasonable facsimile?
Then if you think that they feel pain, where exactly is the pain transmitted to and what is the typical reaction of a plant to pain?
That is as far as it goes for me.

Plants are not sentient organisms and do not have nervous systems so they do not experience pain in any way that we relate to. Plants do react to adverse conditions in their environments, but they don't scream in pain when they do.

In the wild, plants are broken and buffeted by the wind, uprooted by floods, trampled by animals, eaten by other animals, burnt by the sun, shaded by other plants, and the list goes on and on. I wouldn't feel bad about tending your plants in ways that are mostly beneficial. "Screaming plants" is rhetoric you should not fall for.

I saw a TV show once where they put a mimosa to sleep with anesthetic. I probably sound dumb for not knowing, but I wish I could remember how it caused the plant to react with no nervous system.

They have done studies that show that plants love heavy metal music. So I make certain mine get to hear a lot of Slayer, In This Moment, and Cradle of Filth

We assume that they love Heavy Metal music. What if they are putting on all of that new growth trying to escape the music?

BigBill said:We assume that they love Heavy Metal music. What if they are putting on all of that new growth trying to escape the music?

Then they better grow til they can run out on their own! Nothing like a heavy metal drummer for plant growth

Hiya Pamela,
There's a lot of junk-science and sensational stories out there; there's also a lot of legit science. Beyond that, there's even more that 'we', the giant-brained, quasi-thinking creatures that we are, don't know and don't understand.
I mean, it wasn't all that long ago that the world was flat. Even more recently, 'pain management' was deemed unnecessary for surgical procedures in human infants and animals because the experts said they felt no pain.
At this point, we are just beginning the discovery process concerning plants and finding some of the ways in which they can communicate... still though, we don't speak their language so we interpret (and misinterpret) and put it in our language...

I find your concerns fascinating--
almost verges on "omg, I just realized that I may be a plant sadist "
tough questions to wrestle with...and then, what happens when it's time to eat?

Life feeds on life, for sure.
Personally, I'm eager for the dawning of vegan awareness that gnawing on plants while they are still alive and "screaming in pain" might actually be more 'inhumane' than the consumption of dead animals sorry, just a related 'aside' that I find humorous

Anyway, there have been a few studies that concluded that the plants in the study were able to adapt to and 'learn' from, if you will, repeated, non-threatening stressors, such that they significantly decreased their physical, ultrasonic, and chemical responses that the scientists were tracking to gauge their stress response. (In some of these they even ruled out fatigue as a cause and demonstrated a retained response at a much later date, calling that memory and learning, which of course begs the question how do they remember? and shows how little we know and understand about these life forms without a brain and nervous system managing to do these fascinating things.)

So, it's certainly possible that your plants are accustomed to your obsessive grooming and 'fine with it' (in whatever bio-electro-chemical milieu plants process and store their opinions

I like plants because they DON'T talk back or tell me what they want or don't - I can decide without having to worry about their opinions. Easier than with people..

Does your plant respond well to your grooming? Does is grow better and fuller? If so, why is it screaming? Does it think if it is a good plant you will stop picking at it?

I'm not much of a pincher or groomer, and I prefer plants that are good at taking care of themselves that way but I can appreciate the concerns about overgrooming. I view any dead leaf as fair game for removal, if it's brown and dry. I tend to view living leaves (even if distressed) as a resource my plants (almost all succulents) will continue to withdraw water and nutrients from, so I avoid removing leaves which are still soft or inflated.

Pain is an animal thing, I think. But I would look at stress as very much applicable to plants. They get stressed out by heat or cold or drought or injury. Among my favorite plants are a few that turn wild colors when they are stressed, like these aloes, which are all green(ish) when they are content with life.







A few examples here of stressed and unstressed plants for comparison. A few of them do look a little like they are wailing.














Finally here's a drought-stressed agave (and the same plant after rainfall) showing a different type of stress response.

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

William Goldman

Nice Baja!--some of them do kinda look like they are wailing
If my winters weren't so cruel and deadly for them, I'd love to be able to torture some aloes like that.

This a really weird thread. Plants screaming in pain? Really!!

I think the media ran wild with a recent discovery that some plants emit ultrasonic frequencies when stressed. Please rest assured that your plants are not screaming in pain.
https://www.biorxiv.org/conten...

It is worth noting this section:

The mean number of sounds emitted by drought-stressed plants was 35.4±6.1 and 11.0±1.4 per hour for tomato and tobacco, respectively, and Cut tomato and tobacco plants emitted 25.2±3.2 and 15.2±2.6 sounds per hour, respectively (Fig. 1b). In contrast, the mean number of sounds emitted by plants from all the control groups was lower than 1 per hour.

In short, dehydrating your plant stresses it more than pruning it. It's also worth noting that whilst the control group was very quiet, they don't say it was silent. The data also shows that these aren't "screams" by any definition - they are infrequent, very short bursts of sound (less than 0.2 milliseconds).

We also don't know the purpose (nor the generating mechanism) of these sounds yet, but it seems probable that some animals (and other plants) react to them in some way. I'm conjecturing here, but the duration and period suggest that the sounds are more like an alarm or warning bell that goes off every-so-often (perhaps to tell other plants that there is a predator around, for example).

I'm going to start a rock band and name it "Screaming Aloes"

I love it! 😍
"The Painful Petunias"!!
Or "Crotons With Cramps!" That is enough, I have to stop. I am just getting too silly.
Sorry.