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The secret life of plants: Visualizing vegetative movement, 1880–1903

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17460654.2012.637392

1746-0662

Oliver Gaycken,

History of Science and Natural History

Abstract As devices of motion analysis were introduced into botanical research in the late nineteenth century, Charles and Francis Darwin, Wilhelm Pfeffer, and investigators at the Marey Institute used a variety of techniques to visualize plant movements whose slowness rendered them otherwise imperceptible. These 'time-lapse' images provided novel visual records that initially were seen as providing evidence of an evolutionary link between the plant and animal kingdoms. While time-lapse plant growth images ultimately could not provide proof that plants are evolutionarily related to animals, time-lapse images did remain useful as a means to demonstrate the remarkable vitality of plants to students and lay audiences, and Oskar Messter's exhibition of a time-lapse plant growth film was the first of a long tradition of time-lapse plant growth films that circulated in popular culture. Keywords: time-lapsebotanyCharles and Francis DarwinWilhelm PfefferMarey InstituteOskar Messter Acknowledgements This essay benefited from several opportunities to present versions of this research. The first venue was the 'Gehen – Blühen – Fließen' symposium at the University of Kiel, and I thank Ines Lindner for the invitation to participate. I also received helpful feedback from audiences at the Center for the Humanities at Temple University; the Department of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the Department of English at Oakland University; the Department of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California; the Department of English at the University of Maryland, College Park; and the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. Devin Griffiths, Caitlin McGrath, and Hannah Landecker also heard or read earlier versions of this material and provided useful suggestions. Notes 1. 1. Plant movement had been a topic of Darwin's research earlier as well (see Darwin Citation1865, Citation1875); for more background, see Ayres 2008. 2. Darwin to R. Cooke, 9 September 1879; quoted in de Chadarevian (1996, 21); and Darwin and Darwin Citation1887, 332, quoted in Whippo and Hangarter Citation2009, 2120. 3. Craig Whippo and Roger Hangarter point out that even though the Darwins' ideas about how circumnutation provided evidence of evolutionary linkage were largely rejected, the question of plant inheritance raised in this work proved a productive research direction, which led to the discovery of the auxins, or plant growth hormones, and continues into the present with research focused on how plants inherit proteins. Furthermore, the Darwins' plant movement research introduced the grass coleoptile as a model organism to botany (Whippo and Hangarter Citation2009). 4. Although primarily interested in static structures, Loeb was interested in bridging the plant and animal kingdoms via movements. So while Loeb was not interested in the aliveness of plants – he sought in some ways the opposite, to demonstrate that not only plants but also animals were like machines – his experiments on tropisms, as Rebecca Lemov has noted, had a penchant for the 'dramatic', as when he manipulated caterpillars to starve in proximity to food or made cockroaches align in geometric arrays (Lemov Citation2005, 16). Philip Pauly also notes how Loeb's research on tropisms was 'dramatic' and characterizes his experiments as providing 'striking results [that] were exciting, and even theatrical, experimental achievements' (Pauly Citation1987, 40). So Loeb's capturing and control of movement, his theatricalization of nature, forms a kind of similarity with the more wonderful aspects of the Darwins' time-lapse plant growth work. 5. Francis Darwin consistently made this assertion: '[The sensitive plant] must, in fact, possess the germ of what, as it occurs in man, forms the groundwork of all mental physiology' (Darwin Citation1878, 413) and 'the doctrine of continuity … gives support to belief in a psychic element in plants. All I contend for at this moment is that there is nothing unscientific in classing animals and plants together from a psychological standpoint' (Darwin Citation1901, 44). Darwin's caution makes his position different from attributing higher cognitive functions – perception, empathy, telepathy, etc. – to plants. For an infamous example of an approach that embraces all of these possibilities, see Tompkins and Bird Citation1973. For an analysis and debunking of many of these claims, see Galston and Slayman Citation1979. 6. See also Gaycken Citation2011 for the employment of a similar form of rhetoric in the field of visual education. Ernst Mach extended this argument to include technology; in Mach's view, technological knowledge came under the dynamic of adaptation and was therefore a form of human evolution. For Mach's evolutionary argument about technology, see Mach Citation1888 and Stiegler Citation1998. Samuel Butler advances a similar argument in Erewhon (1872); my thanks to Hannah Landecker and Bernard Lightman for referring me to this text. 7. Darwin's use of images has been the subject of recent interest; see Smith Citation2006; Prodger Citation2009; Voss Citation2010. The question of how Darwinian ideas were taken up by the visual arts is a related area that also has received recent attention; see Goodall Citation2002; Donald and Munro Citation2009; Larson and Brauer Citation2009; Boyd, Carroll, and Gottschall Citation2010. 8. On the graphic method, see Braun Citation1992; de Chadarevian Citation1993; Brain Citation2000. As Smith (2006, 148–9) points out, Darwin had already introduced an earlier version of the glass-bead registration technique in 1875. Francis studied in Sachs's laboratory in the period immediately preceding the publication of The Power of Movement in Plants (1878 and 1879), and it was Francis who emphasized the importance of Sachs's experimental methods to his father upon returning to Down House from Würzburg. For the biographical details, see Browne Citation2002. 9. Although generally associated with the sessile and the slow, plants have secrets in the domain of very fast movement as well; see Edwards, Whitaker, et al. 2005; Whitaker, et al. 2007; Whitaker Citation2008. 10. For an account of Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of Plants that pays particular attention to that author's combination of the combination of sense and reason, pleasure and instruction, see Jackson Citation2009. 11. For a similar argument about the relationship of animals and technologies of representation, see Lippit Citation2000; the similarity of the relation of plants to imaging technologies suggests a possible extension of Lippit's argument, from electric animal to electric vegetable. 12. Darwin was interested in visualizing non-human timescales in other ways as well. His 'worm stone', a large circular stone set into the ground at Down House that slowly sank into the ground because of the movement of the soil by earthworms, provides another example of how he sought to make otherwise imperceptible temporal processes evident (Darwin Citation1881). 13. See Darwin Citation1901, 40 for an illustration of the same principles of tropism. 14. He thanks 'Herrn Mechaniker Bartling' for helping him in these respects (Pfeffer Citation1900, 740). The Bartling in question is most likely Georg Bartling, a fairground showman from Hamburg who manufactured cinema equipment for most of his career (see Rossell Citation2005). 15. On the importance of Anschauung in biology, see Schmidgen Citation2004. Pfeffer's pedagogical use of projections was not singular (see Schmidgen Citation2012). 16. For details on Marey's starfish sequence, see Braun Citation1992; for Marey's mention of Mach's time-lapse idea, see Marey 1894, 305. 17. Talbot (1913, 125, 126) writes about time-lapse being undertaken at the Marey Institute 'in the early days of the present century' and about the film being 'some ten years old'. The other sources that mention this work, without providing many details, are Athanasiu (Citation1905, 117); Bull (1928, 128–31), and Tosi (Citation2005/1993, 174). Tosi does mention that Bull built the apparatus for Pizon at Marey's behest, although he does not provide a source. 18. For microbiology, see Pizon 1905; for embryology, see Ries Citation1909; Landecker Citation2006; and for radiology, see Lefebvre Citation1997. 19. For accounts of the scientific image's appeal to the senses, see Secord Citation2002; for an argument that places an emphasis on how knowledge moves among contexts, see Secord Citation2004. 20. For more on Messter, see Kessler, Lenk, and Loiperdinger Citation1994; Koerber Citation1996; Loiperdinger Citation1994. 21. Messter's attitude resembles that of several other prominent figures in early cinema history. George Kleine, who inherited and ran an optical equipment business, also had a similar interest in cinema's educational potential, as did Leon Gaumont and Charles Urban. For more on these aspects of Kleine, Gaumont, and Urban, see Delmeulle Citation1999; McKernan 2003; Boon Citation2008; Gaycken Citationforthcoming. 22. See Scheffer Citation1910, where he describes his microcinematographic apparatus, which consisted of a Zeiss microscope table and a Kine-Messter camera. Scheffer mentions his collaboration with Dr. Karl Reicher and Froelich, and Reicher identifies Scheffer as the director (Leiter) of the Zeiss laboratory in Berlin and Frölich as an engineer (Herrn Ingenieur) (Reicher Citation1910, 484). 23. Kulturfilm was the word in use to designate a range of 'edifying' topics, which included popular science, in German film culture beginning in the late 1910s; for an account of the Kulturfilm unit at UFA, see Kreimeier Citation1999; see also Curtis Citation1994 for an account of the place of non-fiction films within the silent-era German film industry 24. Thanks to Christina Walter for pointing this aspect of the film out to me. 25. More prominent than Messter's time-lapse flower film were F. Percy Smith's time-lapse films, which he made for the Charles Urban Trading Company beginning in 1909. For more on Smith's time-lapse plant growth films, as well as broader accounts of Smith's career as a popular scientific filmmaker, see McKernan 2003; Boon Citation2008; Gaycken Citationforthcoming. 26. The earliest reference to 'time-lapse' that the OED provides dates from 1937. A similarly broad multitude of words was used to describe the motion picture apparatus in the 1890s; see Jenkins 1898, 24 for a long list of terms for 'cinema'. 27. See Mach Citation1888; Pfeffer Citation1900; Pizon 1905. Also see [Anonymous] 1911, 34. 28. This comment also recalls the many examples in the reception of early cinema that characterize the medium's effect as unnatural because of 'jerky' human movement and thus constitutes yet another instance of time-lapse recapitulating the cinema's reception history; see also Hallé Citation2002/1999, especially 101–4, for an extension of the thought about how a consideration of plant-time requires thinking beyond anthropocentric limits. 29. For an account of Mol's work, see Wahlberg Citation2006; for Agee, see Agee 1941; for Disney and the Moody Bible Institute, see Mitman Citation1999; Gilbert Citation1997; Orgeron and Elsheimer Citation2007. See Becker Citation2004 and Lavery Citation2006 for many other examples of time-lapse imaging; Lavery maintains a website that contains extensive notes at http://time-lapse-photography.blogspot.com/. 30. For accounts of the secret life of plants that do involve a discussion of gender, see Schiebinger Citation1995, especially chapter one, 'The Private Lives of Plants'; also Shteir Citation1996. For the French avant-garde reception, see Gunning Citation2005; Cahill Citation2008; Amad Citation2010; and see Blankenship Citation2010 for an example of time-lapse plant growth film in German silent-era cinema. 31. For an account of Jules Janssen's time-lapse chronophotographic astronomical work, see Canales Citation2002. On the visualization of geological or 'deep time', see McPhee Citation1981 and Rudwick Citation1976, 1992.