...a nursery owner surmises that plants are communicating with humans, and what they're telling us is 'go away and stop killing us.' They are "saying" this by releasing neurotoxins that cause humans to override their sense of self-preservation and kill themselves. The nursery owner is actually citing an example of plant communication that is well-known in the field of plant physiology. The work he's talking about showed that when certain plants (like tobacco or corn) are infested with caterpillars, they release a pheromone that attracts wasps, which will fly over and eat the plant-devouring caterpillars. But while there's obviously some truth to the nursery owner's claims, it's a far cry from killer talking trees.

Green Sibling Rivalry
[Movie spoilage done - keep reading here:] Back in the real world, at Penn State, researchers have shown that some plants only fight for food when they are growing near non-relatives. If its neighbor is a sibling or other relative, it will respectfully withhold its roots to allow its kin to get as many nutrients as it can from the soil. It turns out that these plants can communicate with their neighbors by sensing and sending out chemical compounds underground - directly from their roots.

Plant Prey
And one last case of plant point/counter-point: Certain types of plants, such as some parasitic weeds, have the ability to "sniff' their environment to determine when they are close to a neighboring plant that they can successfully feed off of. Check out this sniffing ability in a dodder weed 'stalking' its prey - an unsuspecting tomato plant.

So while those trees and plants outside your window may look like they are just sitting there doing nothing, if you have the right tools to 'listen' to them, you'll find there's a whole secret life they are leading right in front of your unsuspecting eyes. And while movies like 'The Happening' may be stretching things a bit, we should still remember how much our green, leafy friends have to offer us, whether we're listening or not.