Plants can cause short-term memory loss.

And no, you don’t have to eat a plant, smoke a plant, or even touch a plant for this memory loss to occur.

You can experience plant-induced short-term memory loss just by being around plants.

For example, you might decide that you have enough plants in your garden and vow you won’t purchase any more this season.

Then you walk by a plant display at the local grocery store and see a really interesting looking plant. The mere sight of that plant causes you to forget your vow to not buy any more plants. You load the plant in your cart, or maybe you load up three of them, then proceed to the checkout to complete your purchase.

You get home with your new plants and then you remember. You remember your vow and you remember you forgot to buy the groceries you went to the store to buy in the first place.

It happens. Don’t beat yourself up over it.

Another example, in case you still don’t believe me that plants can cause short-term memory loss, happens when you are walking around your garden with a friend and they point at a plant and ask you what it is.

Bam! Your short-term memory is zapped and you cannot remember the plant name.  Yes, that plant name you swore you’d remember so you didn’t keep the tag. Now you no longer have any recollection of what was on that tag.

Plants caused that short-term memory loss.

And one last example, in case you are still not convinced.

This one is a bit more diabolical on the plant’s part, or shall we say the weed’s part.

You are working about your garden and see a big weed that you know has roots that need to be dug out. So you stop what you are doing and head toward the shed or garage to get just the right tool for digging out those roots. Along the way, you get distracted by something else in the garden. Then hours later, you finish up whatever caught your attention on the way to find the right tool to dig out the weed—maybe it was some necessary watering or pruning—and go inside to get cleaned up.

The next day, you go back out to the garden and suddenly you see the weed and your memory is restored. “Oh, right,” you say, “I was going to dig that out.”

And maybe that second time, you do remember long enough to get the tool and dig it out.

Or maybe you don’t.

Because clearly,  plants can affect your short-term memory… for their own good, as I’ve shown with these three examples.

You’ve been warned.

Go forth and garden. And maybe take a notepad with you to write down the really important stuff that you don’t want to forget!