Prince of Wales with a red squirrel at his Birkhall home on the Balmoral Estate in Scotland Photo: PAUpdate Nov 19, 2010| Prince Charles appears in a special interview with NBC’s Brian Williams tonight, discussing a wide range of topics, but first and foremost, his concerns about the environment, small farmers, organic food and a host of topics for which the future king of England has been ridiculed.

Today the taunting has stopped among smart people, who now listen to Prince Charles when the subject is Green Beings.

“I am absolutely determined to be the defender of nature. Full stop. That’s what the rest of my life is going to be concerned with,” Prince Charles told Vanity Fair correspondent Bob Colacello in the current November 2010 issue. Prince Charles is promoting his new book ‘Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World’.

Prince Charles asked about Reef Health in Tobago; via Flickr’s Jennie - My Travels

Written June 20, 2009

Britain’s Prince Charles has been called a wacko and worse for his views on the environment and our human relationships with nature generally.

Back in a 1986 television interview, Prince Charles was asked about his gardening practices and philosophies. His response made him the subject of great ridicule: ‘I just come and talk to the plants, really. Very important to talk to them - they respond, I find.’

A few weeks ago, we shared a ‘knowing the outcome in advance’ smile over the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) launch of a month-long study on the effect of human voices on tomato plants:

J’Adore: Brits Talking to Tomato Plants

tomato plant … via Flickr’s creddTen different voices were chosen to read passages from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to tomato plants, housed at Wisely.

The talked-to plants were housed together in the same greenhouse, measured against control plants not exposed to the sound of the human voice.

London Times Damian Whitworth was invited to participate in the experiment, and his plants failed miserably, growing less than the control group.

The plant that grew the most had been listening to Sarah Darwin, great-great-granddaughter of Charles, reading his revolutionary work. Her plant grew 1.6cm (almost two thirds of an inch) higher than the most successful of the two control plants.

Generally, the tomato plants responded more positively to female voices, opening up a new phase of investigation.

Note that we’re talking two-thirds of an inch difference in one month between the control plants and Sarah Darwin’s. What about an entire summer? What about a greenhouse of tomato plants, all listening to Sarah Darwin read her grandfather’s ‘On the Origin of Species.’

In 2007 Mi Jeong Jeong, a South Korean scientist, discovered that playing Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata to rice plants led to faster growth and earlier blossom.

As research proliferates, confirming that ‘the secret lives of plants’ is a reality, I predict a complex argument for PETA on why flies are more ‘sacred’ on nature’s ethical scale than tomato plants. See my Cultural Creatives post today: Dear PETA, If Tomato Plants Have Feelings and Prefer Female Voices, Can We Still Eat Them?

I’m also intrigued that science is confirming ancient beliefs around the complexity and overall sensuality of nature. In the year that we’re celebrating Charles Darwin’s work, science validates and humanizes his observations more than ever.

It seems that Prince Charles had it right, in his intimate understanding of (wo)man’s relationship with nature. And so did the ancient goddesses.

In the 21st century only science and Michelle Obama will convince us that our relationship with nature is one we must cultivate. Perhaps they will succeed where Thomas Jefferson failed.

Now that Michelle has the Queen on board with a vegetable, when Her Majesty’s son couldn’t prevail, Prince Charles seems to be the man of the hour.

I wonder what went through the Prince’s male mind, when his Queen Mum gave him the Victoria Medal of Honour at May’s Chelsea Flower Show, in recognition of what the RHS described as ‘his passion for plants, sustainable gardening and the environment’. Perhaps he pondered that fact that we women give directions far better than we receive them.

Belated thanks to Prince Charles for staying true to his convictions. For more on the Prince’s work on preserving nature and the environment, please read:

Prince Charles Launches Global YouTube and MySpace Campaign to Save Rainforests

With regard to my personal relationship with plants and nature:

Chipping Campden, Carversville and an American Cry for Help (Prince Charles about the environment in a YouTube video)

J’Adore: Plants with Secret Lives, Especially the Giant Amazon Water Lily