South Carolina couple were spooked when they discovered a strange plant violently swaying on it's own during a recent trip to the countryside.
Jason Freeman and his wife were out riding near Hilton when they came across the bizarre plant rocking back and forth despite there not being a breath of wind in the air.
'OK that is really starting to creep me out,' says Freeman, who began filming the weird occurrence. 'It's not wind. Look at it go.'
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Swaying plant: A South Carolina couple were spooked when they discovered a strange plant, pictured, violently swaying on it's own during a recent trip to the countryside
Mysterious plant moving on its own
The footage shows the man pan his cell phone camera around to show that nothing else is moving on what appears to be a completely still day.
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He then comes back to focus on the plant, which is still swinging from side to side.
'God, it's crazy. Look how fast it's going,' Freeman says on the tape, laughing. 'Oh my God, that is so weird. It's like going all over the place.'
Weird: At one point, the man tries to stop the plant moving with his hand, and manages to keep it still for a moment but it quickly starts up again
At one point, the man tries to stop the plant moving with his hand, and manages to keep it still for a moment.
But sure enough, it quickly resumes its metronomic swaying once he's let go.
Freeman uploaded the video of the mysterious plant to YouTube on April 9.
Since then, the tape has garnered more than 264,550 views. He also uploaded a second tape, in which his wife tries to work out what is behind the violent swaying.
Shake: Freeman uploaded the video of the mysterious plant to YouTube on April 9
She holds her hand against it and it hits against her palm.
Later, the plant slows and becomes completely still.
'Maybe I just unhooked it from something,' the woman says. But then it starts up again.
'Weirdest thing I have ever seen,' Freeman says. 'We have to look it up.'
One Youtube commenter tries to explain the bizarre phenomenon.
'This happens when a plant's resonant frequency is magnified by wind that we can't feel,' the user writes, referring to a paper on the topic in the American Journal of Botany titled 'Oscillation frequencies of tapered plant stems.'
A SWAYING MYSTERY
Titled Oscillation frequencies of tapered plant stems, this 2001 paper reveals the secret of swaying plants
A 2001 study in the American Journal of Botany titled 'Oscillation frequencies of tapered plant stems.' examined the phenomenon of plants that appear to sway on their own.
The key, it found, was extremely weak winds that are imperceptible to humans, but magnify oscillations in the plant, making it appear to move for no reason.
'Free oscillations of upright plant stems, or in technical terms, slender tapered rods with one end free, can be described by considering the equilibrium between bending moments in the form of a differential equation with appropriate boundary conditions,' the researchers Hanns-Christof Spatz and Olga Speck wrote, before analysing the forces needed to the bizarre phenomenon.