5 feb 2019 When you hook plants up to a lie detector machine, interesting things are bound to happen. And they certainly did for Cleve Backster on the morning of February 2, 1966.

Backster was a former CIA agent, FBI trainer and world-renowned polygraph expert who had a curious and playful streak in him that fateful morning.

He decided to connect his polygraph machine to a Dracaena plant sitting in the room to see if he could get a reading when he subjected the plant to stress. He had decided to light a match with the intent of burning a leaf, but that thought was as far as he got. Suddenly the polygraph machine came alive and registered the plant reacting to his mischievous thoughts. Astounded and convinced the plant was able to read his intention, Backster would spend the rest of his life studying the ability of plants to communicate with and read their environments, particularly their spontaneous reactions to living things.

His conclusion? Plants communicated telepathically—a concept which he called primary perception.