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Plant Sounds
August 5, 2024
My early
adulthood coincided with the
New Age movement and its
belief in many
discredited past
ideas, one of which was
astrology. We are supposedly living in the start of a 2,160
year Age of Aquarius, one of the twelve
zodiacal divisions of the 5,920 year
period of
Earth's precession, called a
Great Year. The
anthem of this age is the
song,
The Age of Aquarius made
popular by the
American musical group,
The 5th Dimension.[1] This was the most popular song for a six week period in 1969, and it's listed as one of
Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time in 2024, 55 years after its release.[2] This list is changeable; so, the song might be off the list sometime in the future.
In this marble relief at the Louvre museum, Gaia, the Greek goddess who was the mother of all life, entrusts Erichthonius, her child with Hephaestus, to Athena. This relief is thought to have come from the temple of Hephaestus in Athens.
James Lovelock (1919-2022) named his Gaia hypothesis after Gaia.
(Portion of a Wikimedia Commons image, enhanced to show detail, by Gary Todd. Click for larger image.)
Coincident with the New Age movement was the formulation of the
Gaia hypothesis by
British scientist,
James Lovelock (1919-2022). This hypothesis was that the Earth's
biophysical environment was
synergistic and
self-regulating, acting like a single
organism with the
goal of
self preservation. Scientists have always been
critical of the Gaia hypothesis, since it's a
teleological argument similar to many such arguments proposed by
Aristotle. However, the
Geological Society of London awarded Lovelock its
Wollaston Medal in 2006.
One New Age idea that seemed strange at the time was that
talking to
plants helped them to
grow. What could be more New Age than a
hippie chick talking to a
potted plant? However, a scientific study by the
Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has shown that this actually works, and it works better when
women speak than
men.[3-4]
Leigh French as Goldie Keif, the Hippie Chick, from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
French's segment of the show was called "Share a Little Tea with Goldie."
(Screenshot from a YouTube video by The Smothers Brothers, October 21, 2023. Click for larger image.)
Apparently, the idea that plants respond to
speech was first mentioned in the 1848
book, Nanna, by
German psychologist,
Gustav Fechner (1801-1887).[4] In the RHS
experiment,
recordings were made of
male and
female speakers
reading excerpts from
The Day of the Triffids by
John Wyndham,
Shakespeare's's
A Midsummer's Night Dream, and
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. These recordings were played to ten
tomato plants for more than a
month, and there were two
control plants grown in
silence.[3-4]
The experiment showed that plants grew an
inch higher when exposed to women's
voices than for men's voices.[3-4] One of the woman readers was Sarah Darwin, the
great-great granddaughter of Charles Darwin, who read a portion of his
On the Origin of Species.[3-4] Her plant grew almost two inches taller than that of the best performing male.[3-4] Charles Darwin himself did an experiment in which he played a
bassoon to a
mimosa plant, thinking it might close its
leaves as it does when gently
touched.[5] There was no response; but a bassoon is a low
register musical instrument that would resemble a male voice more than a female voice. Plants exposed to
wind produce
ethylene, a growth retarding
chemical that results in shorter plants with thicker
stems, and this
mechanism might somehow be involved.[4]
Not only do plants respond to speech, but they also emit
sound when they're in
distress. An
open access article appearing last year in the
journal,
Cell, by scientists from
Tel Aviv University (Tel-Aviv, Israel) relate their experimental finding that tomato plants and
tobacco plants will
emit loud ultrasonic popping sounds when stressed from
dehydration, or by having their stems
cut.[6-9] Although these sounds are too high in
frequency to be heard by
humans, they are likely to be heard by
insects, some other
mammals; and, possibly, other plants.[7] The
amplitude of the sound is at a level similar to that of human speech.[8]
In the experiments,
microphones recorded sounds from
healthy and stressed tomato and tobacco plants, both in a
soundproofed acoustic chamber, and then in a
greenhouse.[7] the plants were stressed in two ways, by withholding water for several days, and by cutting the plant stems.[7] Tomato and tobacco plants were selected for study, since they are easy to grow, but it was found that
corn,
wheat,
grape, and
cactus plants also emit sounds when they are stressed.[7] The resultant plant sounds resemble pops or
clicks (listen to example), with each stressed plant emitting about 30-50 clicks per hour at
random intervals.[7] Unstressed tomato plants were very
quiet.[7] After
peaking at five days, water stressed plants emitted sound at a decreased
rate until they were completely
dried.[7]
Montage of
tomato plant popping sounds shifted to
audible frequencies , with some
background music, as extracted from a
YouTube video.[8] The recorded plant sounds are released under a
Creative Commons 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license at ref. 9.[9]
Members of the
research team had previously found that plants increase their
sugar content when they
hear sounds made by
pollinators.[7] Although the mechanism of the sound generation in plants is not known, the research team
conjectures that it might arise from the formation and
bursting of
air bubble in the plant's vascular system.[7] They also conjecture that other organisms could have evolved to hear and respond to these sounds.[7] One possible application of this research is
monitoring plants to determine when
irrigation is needed, thereby
conserving water.[7]
Audio spectrum
of plant sounds. (Figure 1d of ref. 6, released under a Creative Commons License.[6] Click for larger image.)
References:
- The 5th Dimension - Aquarius / Let The Sunshine In (1969), YouTube video by Unodel53, July 15, 2020.
- Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Songs, Billboard.
- Richard Alleyne, "Women's voices 'make plants grow faster' finds Royal Horticultural Society," Telegraph (UK), June 22, 2009.
- Kateryna Onysko, "Can talking to plant help it grow?" Pennsylvania State University, October 21, 2015.
- Caspar Henderson, "What Plants Hear," Nautilus, February 6, 2024.
- Itzhak Khait, Ohad Lewin-Epstein, Raz Sharon, Kfir Saban, Revital Goldstein, Yehuda Anikster, Yarden Zeron, Chen Agassy, and Shaked Nizan, "Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative," Cell, vol. 186, no. 7, Article no. P1328-1336.e10, March 30, 2023, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.009. This is an open access article with a PDF file here.
- Stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be detected from more than a meter away, Cell Press, March 30, 2023 (via phys.org).
- Global breakthrough: Plants emit sounds!, YouTube video by TAUVOD, March 30, 2023.
- Recorded plant sounds from: Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative, raw audio files at datadryad.org.
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