Christopher Bird; Wrote on Plants’ Emotions

Christopher Bird, 67, coauthor of a best-selling book that claimed that plants have emotional feelings. Bird and Peter Tompkins captured international attention in 1973 with their book “The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Men.” The writers asserted that experiments indicated that plants instantly register the reactions of people important to them, even feeling their owners’ pain. A native of Boston who graduated from Harvard University, Bird served in the Army in Vietnam and worked for Rand Corp. and as a journalist. Among his many books were “The Divining Hand” in 1987, about dowsing or water-witching, the controversial technique of locating water with a forked stick, and another written with Tompkins, “Secrets of the Soil” in 1989, on reversing soil pollution. On May 2 in Blairsville, Ga., of complications after a stroke.