Does Sound & Music Enhance Plant Growth?
Exploring research and experiments suggesting that sound frequencies and music may influence plant growth and behavior.
Does Sound & Music Enhance Plant Growth?!?
December 23, 2014 — David Wechsler
Huh?!? Yeah…
Don’t believe it?
Read on…
While the last two articles covered how naturally occurring electric fields were discovered to improve plant growth, I’d like to briefly touch on something else that may have a similar effect: sound.
It might seem a bit strange at first, but there is actually a long history of experiments exploring whether sound and music can influence plant growth.
Early Experiments with Music and Plants
To begin, have you ever heard of an album called “Music to Grow Plants”?
It was a record album created by Dr. George Milstein in 1972, around the same time the famous book The Secret Life of Plants was published.
The idea behind the album was that certain musical sounds and patterns might stimulate plant growth.
If you’re curious, the site Root Simple actually has a post about this album and even links to some of the original recordings.
Another well-known book from that era was “The Sound of Music and Plants” by Dorothy Retallack, which documented a series of experiments involving different types of music played to plants.
Back then, these ideas sounded pretty unusual.
But today, researchers are beginning to revisit the subject with modern experimental approaches, and some of the findings suggest it might not be as far-fetched as once believed.
Modern Plant Sound Research & Experimentation
One researcher who has been active in the electroculture community and is also experimenting with sound and plant growth is Yannick Van Doorne.
On his website, Music For Your Plants, he shares both the history of this topic and some of his own experimental work using sound waves to influence plant growth.
Another fascinating researcher in this area is Dr. Monica Gagliano of the University of Western Australia.
She studies plant communication and has helped demonstrate that plants communicate in a variety of ways, including:
- chemical signals
- airborne compounds
- mechanical signals
- and even sound vibrations
Some of her work has suggested that plants may actually respond to specific sound frequencies.
For example, one experiment found that corn plants responded strongly to a 200 Hz frequency, growing toward the sound source.
This phenomenon has been referred to as sonotropism — essentially, plants growing toward sound.
It raises some interesting questions:
What frequencies work best?
Do different plants respond to different sounds?
Are there patterns that could eventually be used in agriculture?
These are all questions that could lead to some very interesting research.
Music Experiments with Plants
Beyond controlled sound frequency experiments, many people have tried playing different types of music to plants.
Some experiments have used:
- classical music
- natural environmental sounds
- electronic tones
- and even more complex forms of music.
One particularly amusing example comes from an experiment performed by the cast of MythBusters in Episode 23 (2004).
They tested several types of music to see if plants responded differently.
Surprisingly, the plants exposed to death metal music actually showed the most favorable growth results in their experiment!
Whether that result was due to specific sound frequencies, vibration patterns, or some other factor is hard to say—but it certainly makes the topic even more interesting.
Talking to Plants
There have even been experiments suggesting that direct human interaction may influence plants.
One example is a project called TalkToAPlant.com, where people could actually send Twitter messages to a plant connected to a monitoring system.
The idea was to see whether the plant showed any measurable physiological responses when it received messages.
Some experiments reported positive physiological changes when plants were “tweeted at.”
Of course, whether this was due to sound, vibration, electromagnetic signals, or something else entirely is still open to interpretation.
Maybe Talking to Plants Isn’t So Crazy After All
So perhaps when people say that talking to plants helps them grow, there may be more going on than just the extra carbon dioxide from our breath.
It’s possible that:
- sound vibrations
- frequencies
- music patterns
- or even human interaction itself
may all play some role in influencing plant growth.
As with many things in this field, it’s still an area that deserves much more experimentation and careful study.
What Do You Think?
Have you ever experimented with music, sound, or talking to plants?
Did you notice any differences in plant growth or health?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Tags:
new science, crops, growth acceleration, growth enhancement, music, plants, sound