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