How many times have you looked lovingly at your suffering Aralia, begging it to tell you what it wants, what you’re doing wrong? You would do anything to make it happy, you explain lovingly. It just sulks in the corner, silently judging you.

Finally, we can communicate. Botanicalls, a project of Kate Hartman, Kati London, Rebecca Bray, and Rob Faludi at ITP, opens a new channel of communication between plants and humans, in an effort to promote successful inter-species understanding. Botanicalls allows plants to place phone calls for human help. When a plant on the Botanicalls network needs water, it can call a person and ask for exactly what it needs. When people phone the plants, the plants orient callers to their habits and characteristics.

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