While there is some research pointing towards plants being able to sense and react to sound, it’s still difficult to say whether or not music has a tangible effect on your plants.
Anecdotally, many gardeners have personal anecdotes about how they play music for their plants while harvesting produce and the results are fruits with sweeter flavors. But this might be more attributable to the fact that those harvests are happening during the warmer months when we’re more likely to turn up the volume on our favorite jams.
There is no evidence that suggests plants grow when listening to music. Should it raise the question of whether or not plants like music, it’s difficult to draw a solid conclusion whether plants prefer Mozart or Metallica?
What I do know is that plants have been shown to react to sound. In fact, there have been a variety of studies investigating this phenomenon, and that evidence is presented below.
Does Sound Affect Plants?
Although there isn’t a lot of hard evidence for how sound affects plants, there are some studies that point towards this phenomenon. For example, bees communicate with one another by rubbing against plants in a process called “buzz pollination.”
This activity causes the plant to release pollen, which will help fertilize nearby flowers. This behavior happens regardless of whether or not there are any bees in the area.
Another study on bamboos found that they could produce vibrations in the plant’s stem when there was an outside disturbance such as the wind or a loud noise. The vibrations traveled through the plant from leaf to leaf and also from root to shoot.
When it comes to light, plants have been observed to respond more quickly than they do to the sound. For example, if a plant is receiving more light than it needs, the leaves will open up and get more sunshine.
If the plant is less stressed by too much light, the leaves will close down. This behavior has led researchers to believe that plants can feel and respond to light way faster than they can feel or respond to sound.
What kinds of music do plants like?
There’s no definitive answer to this. For example, it has been suggested that music can trigger plant hormones such as ethylene and gibberellic acid, which will encourage the formation of fruits or flowers. These results have been observed in several studies over the years.
Although these studies are interesting and provide us with a possible mechanism of action for how sound affects plants, it doesn’t mean that playing music is going to lead to increased numbers of flowers on your plants. it is often said that music in the frequency range between 115Hz and 250Hz is good for growth and that music with frequencies over 500Hz is best for flowering.
There have been other studies that have found no effect on sound and ethylene production. This could be because of the different plant species being studied, the conditions in which the experiments were conducted, or just that these studies haven’t gotten enough attention in the published literature.
Does music kill plants?
It is often said that rock music kills plants. While there isn’t any scientific evidence to support this, it’s still a fun question. One study that investigated the effect of music on plant transpiration and respiration found that plants had increased leaf movement, going so far as to say that stem and leaf movement was “proof of life.”
It’s possible that as people continue to come up with new ways to use sound in agriculture, we will have more information about how sound affects plants.
Conclusion on Do Plants Like Music
It’s difficult to say whether or not plants like music. Anecdotal evidence suggests that plants grow during the summer when you’re playing a lot of heavy metal and ska on your stereo, but there are also anecdotes suggesting that country music makes plants grow faster.
Until there is more research into this topic, we need to keep the question of whether or not plants like music as more of a fun discussion than scientifically proven fact.
