Plant Reaction to Music

People are always experimenting with ways to encourage their plants to grow larger and produce more. This is not a new phenomenon. Our ancestors who first began to experiment with cultivating plants probably tried to do the very same thing. After all, they were planting food for their survival. Along with experimenting with various kinds of compost that includes the excrement of bats and worms, growers have experimented with the effect of music on plants. Two of the most notable experiments in this were conducted by the Discovery show Mythbusters and a woman named Dorothy Retallack. While the experiment conducted by Mythbusters was not conducted under ideal or consistent conditions, both the show and Ms Retallack were able to prove one thing: plants do react to music.

The Constant Tone
In the first experiment conducted by Retallack, she worked with plants in three greenhouses that had the same conditions in each. She exposed one group of plants to a constant tone for eight-hour increments, and another for three-hour increments. The plants with the intermittent tone did the best. The ones with the constant tones died, and the ones in silence did second-best.

Plants and "Elevator" Music
When experimenting with what many term "elevator music" or "easy listening music," Rettallack found that not only did they respond well, the plants actually began to bend toward the speakers.

Plants and Rock Music
Plants do not seem to enjoy rock music. This was the conclusion gained by Retallack, Mythbusters (though their results should be taken with a grain of salt), and Marcia Riley, a student at Old Mission Junior High School, Kansas City, Kansas. Across the board, these plants produced poorly and some of them died.

Plants and Classical Music
Another result shared by Retallack, Mythbusters and Riley was the fondness of plants for classical music. The plants responded well, producing large leaves and exhibiting healthy growth. In Retallack's greenhouse, the plants even leaned toward the speakers.

Plants and Arnold Schonberg
The music of Arnold Schonberg, a modern composer whose music can be described as discordant, was played to plants by both Retallack and Don Robertson, author of "About Positive Music." The results for both were the same: the plants died.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/about_5367378_plant-reaction-music.html

How Does Music Affect a Plant?

There are several schools of thought on the way plants are affected by music, if at all. On one extreme is the argument that plants don't have ears and therefore don't have the mechanism to hear music. On the other is the argument that music is more than sound waves to be received by the ears but also is made up of waves with the potential to affect living things that lack ears with which to hear. Science seems to back up the latter argument.

Dorothy Retallack Experiments
Dorothy Retallack, author of "The Sound of Music and Plants," exposed plants to a series of music types while attending Colorado Women's College in the early 1970s. The plants would have one of three responses -- they would grow like the control plants, they would lean away from the source of the music or they would lean toward it. She found that plants leaned toward Indian, jazz and classical music while leaning away from rock music and percussion sounds. Water was utilized more in growing chambers where the plants grew toward the music.

Dan Carlson Experiments
Dan Carlson, creator of the organic foliar nutrient Sonic Bloom, attended Minnesota's Experimental College. While there, he discovered that some sounds would sometimes cause the stomata (small openings in leaves) to open wider. Plants "breathe" through these openings and can intake nutrients through them as well. Hindu and classical music seemed to cause the stomata to open more, which appeared to back up the findings in the Dorothy Retallack experiments. What he discovered, interestingly enough, was that the tones in the music that caused the stomata reaction closely corresponded with several tones in bird songs.

Mordecai Jaffe Experiments
Plant physiologist Mordecai Jaffe, while attending Wake Forest University, conducted an sound experiment with peas. He exposed the peas to an instrument that made a sort of warbling sound, and the peas responded by doubling their growth. He thought the hormone called gibberellic acid, involved in the lengthening of shoots, was involved in the response to the instrument. When he added a chemical that inhibited this hormone, the plants no longer responded the same way.

Joel Sternheimer Experiments
Joel Sternheimer, musician and physicist, discovered that certain notes correspond to the amino acids in the plant's proteins. Every plant seems to respond to a different tune that stimulates its growth, causing it to produce more proteins. Sternheimer composes songs unique to each plant. This has enormous implications in the farming industry, potentially making fertilizers and herbicides obsolete.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/info_8695977_music-affect-plant.html