Is there a correlation between plant growth and music?
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Raise your hand if you talk or sing to your plants or if you let them listen to music! Do you think it’s foolish? Well, apparently not!
A correlation between music and plant growth has always been one of the key research points of scientists passioned for music, or plants, or both.
In 1962 doctor T. C. Singh, head of the Department of Botany of Annamalai University in India, conducted several experiments trying to attest that the right sounds can improve plant growth. According to its research, playing classical, jazz and light Indian music could boost rice harvest by 25-60% and even increase peanuts harvest by 50%.
Others after him decided to try in different ways:
- A researcher from Colorado Greenhouse tried the experiment with rock music. He didn’t succeed because it appears that “rock music creates greater pressure that’s not conducive for plant growth”;
- A researcher in Illinois played 24h a day George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. He found out that the growth improved by 40% for
- A Canadian university discovered that if you expose a harvest of wheat to high-frequency vibrations, it yields to nearly doubled the
- In Tuscany (Paradiso Frassina) classical music is played for better wine production.
Apparently, harmonic sound waves affect growth, flowering, and fruiting.
Isn’t romantic thinking that plants can “feel” the music even that they don’t have ears? Music is not a question of taste, it’s a physic resonance between sounds and plants. What if there is a reason behind these findings? What if it isn’t just the music itself?
Some researchers reported the fallacy of these experiments as the results are impossible to repeat. The methods that were not scientific enough and the numbers were not enough significant. The debate was so triggered that at the end the Researchers of the University of California decided to intervene: as soon as they tried to replicate the famous experiments, they concluded that plants exposed to music thrive because of having a special treatment and high level of care.
Listen to music with your plant and take care of it
Next time you look after your plants and you want to listen to music, do it: plants don’t care if you listen to heavy metal, rap or aboriginal music, they just need you to care.
