Plant consciousness does not refer to paranormal plant perception The Wikipedia entry for Plant consciousness redirects to Plant perception paranormal rather than Plant perception physiology suggesting that it refers to a extrasensory phenomenon But the idea of plant consciousness was common in biological writing in the 19th century in German nature philosophy where it referred to the fact that the plant as an organism acts in a unified way so that when one first part of a plant was affected all the other parts of the plant reacted in a way that suggested that it was conscious of the first part Its related to the idea of plant intelligence it wasn t meant to suggest any extrasensory awareness To these writers human consciousness was referred to as a special adaptation of consciousness unified consciousness Eduard von Hartman who popularized the idea of the unconscious in 19th century thought from whom Freud would have taken it was one exponent of the idea I haven t read Gustav Fechner but he would have been writing in this type of academic environment and may have referred to a consciousness in this more abstract philosophic sense and emotions as something synonymous with human emotions but without meaning them to be sentient