“But some research shows that speaking nicely to plants will support their growth, whereas yelling at them won't. Rather than the meaning of words, however, this may have more to do with vibrations and volume. Plants react favourably to low levels of vibrations, around 115-250hz being ideal.”
It's True—You Really Should Talk to Your Plants. In a study performed by the Royal Horticultural Society, researchers discovered that talking to your plants really can help them grow faster. 1 They also found that plants grow faster to the sound of a female voice than to the sound of a male voice.
They conducted all sorts of experiments with plants – playing music, talking to plants, vibrations, etc. But their findings were discredited. Now fast forward nearly 50 years, and it has never been scientifically proven that plants have feelings.
Do Plants React to Human Voices? Here's the good news: plants do respond to the sound of your voice. In a study conducted by the Royal Horticultural Society, research demonstrated that plants did respond to human voices. In this study, there were 10 tomato plants, 8 of which had headphones placed around their pots.
Your plants really dislike when you touch them, apparently. A new study out of the La Trobe Institute for Agriculture and Food has found that most plants are extremely sensitive to touch, and even a light touch can significantly stunt their growth, reports Phys.org.
No – unlike humans and non-human animals, plants do not have feelings. It is undeniable that a plant can respond to environmental stimuli, like turning towards the light or closing over a fly.
While no one claims that plants “feel” emotions, as humans do, plants do show signs of “sensing” their surroundings. Now researchers are working to see what we can discover about the possibility that plants exhibit intelligence in their adaptations to their environment and changes within it.
Touch Triggers A Genetic Defense Response In Houseplants
Professor Jim Whelan, who led the research, said that even the slightest touch activates a major genetic defense response which, if repeated, slows down plant growth.
A happy plant typically has shiny dark green leaves, its flowers are bright and its roots are pale. If you are watering it too much, its extremities will tend to turn yellow and the rhizome will turn brown or black.
Plants thrive when they listen to music that sits between 115Hz and 250Hz, as the vibrations emitted by such music emulate similar sounds in nature. Plants don't like being exposed to music more than one to three hours per day. Jazz and classical music seems to be the music of choice for ultimate plant stimulation.
In a Mythbusters experiment involving seven plants — two received positive speech, two received negative speech, one listened to classical music, another to death metal and the last was left in silence — the plant left in silence fared the worst. Surprisingly, the one to flourish the most was the death metal plant.
For most plants playing classical or jazz music caused growth to increase, while harsher metal music induced stress. This may be because the vibrations of metal music are too intense for plants and stimulate cells a little too much. We think of this like massaging your plant with a song – they prefer a gentler touch.
Even after a month left alone, the plants “remembered” the falls weren't harmful and ignored them. Dr. Gagliano, now at the University of Western Australia, concluded from the experiment that plants could “learn” long-lasting behaviors, sort of like memories.
Sessile – or stalkless – plants evolved to be incredibly sensitive to their environment in order to survive. Research into their awareness has revealed the incredible ways plants sense their environment: from "hearing" their predators, "smelling" their neighbours1and even "mimicking" the shapes of their plant hosts.
Interacting with plants can increase life satisfaction, reduce anxiety and stress, spark creativity, boost productivity and even mitigate symptoms of PTSD and dementia, studies have shown. And certain plants are natural air purifiers for your house.
Instead of talking to the trees, try cuddling your favourite geranium. While flowers and other members of the plant kingdom seem not to complain when we pinch their buds or step on them, they are fully aware of what's happening and rapidly respond to the way they're treated, scientists have discovered.
New studies show that plants react to threats much in the way that fear motivates people and that plants can reduce depression and lead to longer life spans.
Given that plants do not have pain receptors, nerves, or a brain, they do not feel pain as we members of the animal kingdom understand it. Uprooting a carrot or trimming a hedge is not a form of botanical torture, and you can bite into that apple without worry.
Don't Waste Your Emotions on Plants, They Have No Feelings, Grumpy Scientists Say. A tree falls in the woods; but whether or not anyone hears it, the tree has no regrets. Nor does it experience fear, anger, relief or sadness as it topples to the ground.
All organisms in natural circumstances, animals, plants and bacteria, are aware of changes in their environment and respond by changing behaviour.
In plant cells, most DNA is located in the nucleus, although chloroplasts and mitochondria also contain part of the genetic material. The organization and inheritance patterns of this organellar DNA are quite different to that of nuclear DNA.
Although plants do not sleep in the same way that humans do, they do have more and less active times and they have circadian rhythms—internal clocks that tell them when it is night and when it is day. And like many people, plants are less active at night. When the Sun comes up, however, they awake to the day.
Plants communicate through their roots by secreting tiny amounts of special chemicals into the soil all through the plant's root zone - what scientists call the rhizosphere. These chemicals, called root exudates, send signals to every other living thing in the root zone.
No, music will not help plants grow—even classical—but other audio cues can help plants survive and thrive in their habitats.