Many believe that plants feel things just as we do. Scientists argue this is a myth as plants do not have a nervous system, but many have taken up the challenge of aiming to prove scientific theory wrong with a number of experiments in the last 30 years. One of the most recent experiments that caught our attention came from California.



Above: Plant stomata (pictured above) have been found to be influenced by music.

Every plant has a mouth, in fact more than one mouth. These mouths are called stomata’s and over a year ago at the University of California in San Diego, United States scientists discovered a single mechanism that controls a plants stomata. There are two cells that make up the stomata and these two cells are connected to the resonant frequency of calcium, when the cells come in close contact with this frequency of calcium they close. However what these scientists found was if the frequency was changed slightly the plants stomata would open again after an hour even if the presence of calcium was still strong. This proved that exposures to high tones, music and bird songs stimulated the plant to vibrate and keep their stomata’s open to increase the exchange of gases, therefore increasing growth because plants absorb fertilizer via their stomata. So if the stomata are open the plant will then absorb more nutrients. This obviously can help significantly with the process of plant revegetation and growth

A woman named Dorothy Retallack held one of the first and most famous experiments performed on the effect of music on plants in 1973. Her experiment found that plants grew better under the influence of classical music compared to rock n roll and when jazz music was played some plants would lean towards the speaker and others would lean away. She found these findings whilst she studied her degree in music. She later went onto pen that it wasn’t perhaps the type of music but the instruments played. She also stated that loud frequencies of music had negative effects on plants where the plant sometimes even died.

Another experiment by South Korean scientist Mi-Jeong Jeong in 2007 backed up Retallack’s theory by playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to rice plants. He claimed that this effect forced the plants to grow faster and taller which brought the blooms in earlier. But he identified that the plant genes could only ‘hear’ between sounds produced between the frequencies of 125 hertz and 250 hertz and this sound would have a positive effect on the plants growth, but the sound waves of 50 hertz reduced their activity.

From these experiments and more we can see that there are plenty of experiments that have drawn many conclusions about the effect of music on plants. But what do you think? There are plenty of ways you can try out experiments such as these, for an example of how to conduct an experiment head over to www.buzzle.com/articles/does-music-affect-plant-growth.html.