“Do you talk more when it’s dry?”

Fans of John Wyndham may recognise this quote from ‘The Day of the Triffids’. One summer evening in the days before the disaster, the narrator and a colleague at the triffid farm where he works are listening to the rattling noise made by the thousands of tethered plants in a nearby field. The colleague, a plant expert, suggests that the noise, rather than a random effect of the weather as Mason thinks, may actually be a form of communication. Although Mason is initially sceptical, later events cause him to re-evaluate the theory.

I was reminded of this scene by the news, a couple of weeks ago, that scientists have recorded hypersonic ‘clicks’ given off by plants under stress and are putting forward the theory that these noises can convey information about the condition of the plant. While the researchers concentrated on dehydrated tomato plants, there is also footage of a rather disgruntled-looking cactus wired for sound and emitting a definite clicking or popping noise.

This is not the only triffid analogy in the news; nearly ten years ago, I quoted from the book in response to a story about plants being engineered to produce omega-3 fatty acids hitherto found only in fish oils and animal products using genes from marine algae (technically neither plant nor animal). Since then, successful trials have led to the proposed feeding of the new oils to farmed fish and poultry and to the beginning of the process to approve them for for mass production for human consumption.

In Wyndham’s 1951 novel, which is starting to look alarmingly prescient, the origin of the triffids lies in the manipulation of plant DNA to produce a vegetable oil which far outperforms the best fish oils. When specimens appear worldwide, a large industry quickly springs up to exploit the benefits of this new - if somewhat problematic - crop; it is this abundance of lethal triffids on Home Counties farmland which renders the United Kingdom particularly vulnerable to the subsequent global disaster, one in which the triffids’ ability to communicate, albeit at a basic level, plays a significant role.

Bearing this in mind, it is, perhaps, a little unsettling to read that there is currently an application in place to grow GM Camelina Sativa plants which have been engineered to produce this new fish oil substitute on open-air agricultural stations in Suffolk and Hertfordshire.

What, as they say, could possibly go wrong?

As an aside, 1951 was something of a vintage year for novels, giving us not only the triffids but also ‘Foundation’, ‘The Cruel Sea’, ‘The Daughter of Time’, ‘Nightrunners of Bengal’, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and many others.