Music and Plants by Rosse - Mary

This article will talk about how plants are affected by the music. This matter has been investigated by botanic scientist for several years and - with their reaction of the human voices - there were known as urban myths, but this researchs showed that both popular beliefs are truth. Some scientist discovered that plants  react to the sounds in the same way as wind and ones can grow up earlier than others because of the music influence. Also this post will talk about how the effects of differents kinds of music, voices and some dances affect the plants health and, as a conclusion, I will show a vídeo with some extra experiments that show the reactions of plants to the music.

During great part of 20th century, some scientist were researching about the effects of music in the plants growth. This interest started during the beginning of the century, thanks to the indian psycologist Sir Jagadi Chandra Bose, who dedicated his whole life to investigate how plants react to different enviroments conditions. His books were published in 1902 and 1926, and proved that plants are sesitive to the heat, cold, noise and light. 

Later, the american botanist and horticulturist Luther Burbank discovered plants had, at least, 20 sensory perceptions to react to a new life. He talked with his plants and saw they reacted to his voice. His research was bassed on a Darwin's book called "The variation of animals and plants under domestication". 

Indian culture

In 1962, the indian botanic and Director of the  Botany Departament at India's Annamalia University, Dr. T.C Singh experimented with classical and indian traditional music to see their effects in some plants and discovered that they grow up in height because of this, but also he expossed the plants to the vibrations of an ancestral dance and saw the same results. This kind of dance is called Bahata-Natyam and is the most ancient dance in India, but he didn't use musical instruments. The results showed that even Petunias grew up because of the dance influence.

Country and Jazz

The scientist discovered that with the country music, domestic plants didn't have any reaction, as a no sound effect, but, strangely, they experienced a better growth with the exposition to Jazz music.

Rock music

The biggest experiment about this was made by the australian scientist Dorothy Retallack in 1973. At the beggining, she played the F note in front of a group of plants for 8 hours, another group were expossed to the same note for three hours and a third group didn't recieve any sound. The results showed that the first group died after two weeks, while the second one lived more time.

Retallack's experiment.

In the same year, other students experimented with classical music and their plants grew up succesfully, however, with the exposition of Rock music, the plants got away from the speakers. Retallack saw that them had a similar damage than overwater exposition and marigolds died within two weeks. She put her attention than plants tried to scape from Rock music.

Recent researchers about classical music

In 2004, some scientist saw the effects of classical music and discovered that some vegetables had possitive responses to the melodies and noise. They grew up in similar conditions, unlike the seeds that didn't recieve any stimulation.

Some years later, in 2007, another research about this matter was published. It said that the onion plants grew up more when it listened to classical music, specially when it had more dynamic rythms, and less when it was soft.

Metal and Plants

• Heavy Metal music

Black Sabbath.

The British gardener Chris Beardshaw did an experiment with different kinds of plants within differents greenhouses. In addition to the classical music and the silence, he expossed a group of them to the Black Sabbath's songs and another to Cliff Richard's music and the weird result was the flowers that were expossed at the Sabbath's music were more ressistants to ilness and plagues, and the biggest ones, althought the plants wre the shortest ones, even better than the ones that were grow up with classical music, while the plants that were expossed to Richard's music died few weeks later. His experiment was showed in the British version of Daily Mail and the Telegraph newspapers. 

• Death Metal music 

Some death Metal bands.

If we see the Dorothy Retallack research again, we remind that the plants got away from Rock music, and we can have the conclusion that they can't be expossed to an argressive music as Death Metal, however, in 2006, the Discovery Channel tv program "Mythbusters" did an experiment were 10 plants of peas were expossed to music and human voices. They saw that the music affected to the plants growth and the most successful result had on the ones that were expossed to the strongest Death Metal music. Curiousily, in this case we can see that not all the plants have the same reaction to the music. 

Conclusion

At the end, I will show you a Youtube vídeo with extra experiments that were made by farmers and common people who were interested in how music affects the plants and vegetables growth. It is called "Do plants respond to music?" and it was published in 2015 and I hope you like it.