"Sometimes it happens that a person can name the exact moment when his or her life changed irrevocably. For Cleve Backster, it was early morning on February 2, 1966, at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds of chart time for a polygraph he was administering. One of the world's experts on polygraphs, and the creator of the Backster Zone Comparison Test, the standard used by lie detection examiners worldwide, Backster had threatened the subject's well-being in hopes of triggering a response. The subject had responded electrochemically to this threat. The subject was a plant."

This is from a Derrick Jensen book also, but you can do a search for more information on these and other fascinating experiments that can only change every hypothesis of what westerners consider to be alive and conscious. In light of what he has proven here, it's not much of a stretch to imagine the Giai hypothesis that the entire earth is alive with consciousness. Some native tribes have reported that they see everything as alive, the rocks the rivers and trees, and that the white man sees everything as dead and there for the taking , the rocks the rivers and the trees and sometimes the white man doesn't even see some other people as alive. Since that test Mr. Backster has done many many tests with plants and had amazing discoveries. They are experiments that you can even recreate yourself and you can find out why sciences narrow rigidity won't allow the tests to be accepted.