Call the Guy with the Green Thumb
So, I’ve always considered myself something of a green thumb. Nearly every year since I was in college, I’ve spent some part of my summer growing and caring for plants in the yard of whatever property I happened to be living on at the time. Sometimes I have great success with my gardens, growing the most lush and beautiful of plants, climbing Morning Glories on trellises, green beans covering the harsh lines of a chain link fence, tomato plants showing off a vibrant red selection of fruit. Other times, I’d often wish that my plants could call me and tell me exactly what it is they need so that they can grow well. This year, in particular, I’ve had a big problem with what was supposed to be a beautiful Orange Velvet rose bush, and my Clematis took so long to grow that I was tempted at one point to rip it from the ground because I thought it was dead.
Enter Botanicalls, a New York-based research company that has a goal of offering plants a way to communicate with their human companions. I originally heard about this company about a month ago when looking at some news items on Reuters (click here to see the video). Today, I got the chance to investigate a little further, and though the idea seems a little out of the ordinary, I think it’s terrific.
In essence, the team has deduced a way to map a plant to its need for water and light, and is able to determine what a plant needs to be happy based on the feedback of sensors buried around it. If there’s not enough water, not enough light, too much watter or everything is just right, the plant initiates a phone call to let a human owner know how it’s feeling. Each plant they’ve been working with appears to have been assigned its own personality as well; for example, the Scotch Moss plant will call up the owner in a fake Scotch accent and let them know “I’m in need of waterrrr,” or something similar. Lithops, or Living Stones, are slow growers, and might call in a ponderous voice and let you know that “everything is fine, thanks.”
The Botanicalls team is made up of four NYU graduate students with impressive credentials and a great sense of humor. A particular gem is the newsreel they created to describe how the process works in more detail. I’ve watched it twice already.
I wonder once the technology is perfected, what kind of plants would be targeted for it? Would these be potted plants only? Would we be able to use the devices outside? Would the device become sophisticated enough to determine whether there was some underground bug attacking the roots of the plant, or other ailments, for that matter? Right now the sensors are circuit boards that are placed in the same pot as the plant which they’ll be monitoring. The sensor monitors certain thresholds for water based on plant type, then determines whether a phone call should be made. If it determines someone needs to do something, it initiates a call to a PHP script on the network, which works in conjunction with a MySQL database and a product called Asterisk to determine who should be called and what they should be told.
I am, quite honestly, fascinated by the device and would love to be able to stick a few in my garden in the next 5 years or so. The idea of my plants letting me know when they need me is intriguing, though I’d like to make a request that we avoid any nagging mother personalities for future plants. Imagine, sleeping in on a Sunday morning when suddenly the phone rings with a voice on the other end, prodding you down to your garden because “ever since you got this sprinkler you never visit.” I would uproot that Clematis if it ever spoke to me like that.
