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talking to plants
October 2009 
Don't let your boyfriend talk to the plants....
Posted on Jun 28th, 2009
by 
Sandra
Sandra
On the flight from Toronto to Heathrow I read a funny article in the Telegraph by Richard Alleyne about the effect of voices on plant growth:
"Talking to plants really does help them grow, especially if the speaker is a woman, horticulturists have found.
In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to two inches taller if they were serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male.
The findings vindicate comments made by Prince Charles that he talks to his plants although they suggest that for maximum results he would be better off recruiting the Duchess of Cornwall.
Appropriately the most effective talk came from Sarah Darwin, whose great-great grandfather was legendary botanist Charles Darwin, one of the founding fathers of the RHS' Scientific Committee.
She read a read a passage from the On the Origin of Species and beat nine other 'voices'.
Her plant grew nearly two inches taller than the best performing male and half an inch higher than her nearest competitor.
Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said: "We predicted that the male voice would be more effective but it turned out that the ladies were far better than the gentlemen.
"We just don't why. It could be that they have a greater range of pitch and tone that affects the sound waves that hit the plant. Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light."
The experiment began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, with open auditions for the public to record excerpts from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
A variety of voices was then picked to play to 10 tomato plants over a month. Every plant was played a voice through headphones connected to the plant pot, and the conditions for all the plants remained the same throughout the experiment. To ensure the experiment was fair, two control plants were also left to grow in silence.
The results showed that women on average saw their plants rise by an inch on their male counterparts. Some men were so bad that their plants actually grew less than a plant that was left completely alone."
Access: PublicTagged with: talking to plants
Chuckling at the title; and happy to read the details! The cats are …indescribably cute!
I laughed out loud in the 'plane when I read the article… Thanks for stopping by dear!
My husband doesn't talk to them, but at least he watered when I was away last week. I don't talk to my plants, but I have music on constantly when I'm painting. They seem to like it.
Good I play music to them, then… But what I really like is that they gave them earphones!
I venture to say in-person version of experiment would see overall better effects for everyone. Headphones put out electromagnetic pollution that damage plants (uh, and people too.)
Yes, plants love music. I think there have been experiments for differing kinds of music, too, with predictable results!!! Don't recall whether the experiments were plants or people, with physiological measures of health markers.
I once “talked” WITH a bamboo plant that was not thriving, asking it what it wanted in order to thrive better, and it said it would like to hear bamboo flute music. Made sense to me, LOL !!!!!
Love, OM Bastet
Thank god I don't have a boyfriend… but
I also have only one plant. It's the only one that survives my tender and sporadic “care”.
Would be interested to hear if your bamboo was thriving after that, Om Bastet
Hi Mushin, I don't recall. It was someone else's plant. Wish I DID recall!! But in principle, yes, LOL !!!!
Blessings, OM
Ok, Ok hold on here a second, What type of plants did the ladies inspire? Were there any that were gender specific, Come on guys we have to at least keeping trying. LOL. Does that mean we don't have to make salads ?? You know won't be as light and fresh tasting. Or how about grass maybe we should stop cutting it and just play golf on it to keep the height down. Or trees lord forbid we need to cut one down we guys could just go out and sit underneath till it shrinks or starts dropping apples on us.
Lovely post more power to you ladies.
=}
I do know from experience that a man can have green thumbs, I think the English saying is… and what's more, that might be because I'm not a vegetarian!
When vegetarians get on my nerves evangelizing how cruel I am because of my omnivorous habits I like to tell how in a former life I was a carrot, and one of these raw food lovers ate me alive! After skinning me violently, of course.
Seems that in this universe we all eat some beings, plants and otherwise, and I don't think it's gender specific - at least most of the time; that must be because we do have a metabolism and therefor behave metabolic, which is not diabolic by the way. Meaning, we make parts of the natural world into parts of ourselves by ingestion, and then we feed part of the natural world again by exgestion (is that a word? It should be!).
So maybe from now on I'll be more aware of that and bless my food fro sacrificing its separate existence on my behalf.
And singing our song and hearing some music makes it much more enjoyable - for everybody apparently! Cows like Mozart, scientists found.
Hmm..what's it about a carrot that we have stories related to it? When people used to argue with us [I'm a vegetarian] that we're also taking life, just as non-vegetarians are; my mom gave us a rejoinder :”When I can keep a carrot for a pet, I'll stop eating vegetables.”
Ah well; in the end we all realized that yes, it's all life eating life and it can't be an intellectual debate. No winners.
[sorry for off-topic wanderings, Sandra!]
This interchange was fun to do, Mushin!
Many of my best friends are vegetarians - as the saying goes. And it's true.
And yes, it's amazing that carrots are so prominent, as in “Sticks and carrots” (at least I think it's an English saying too?)
And seriously, as in the above article that Sandra brought to our attention a point about gender and their handling of plants is made I think it would be even more interesting if researchers where to look if there'd be a difference between vegetarians and omnivores.
The research is so human related when it looks to gender; wouldn't it be much more plant related if it were looking for differences in human eating habits. Especially if there would be a group of fruitarians that are the least threat to plants were included in the research…
I'm enjoying this conversation here.. it's a bit like a lovely group of friends hanging out in my kitchen (chopping carrots?) having a natter while I poke about here and there.
I'm sure there were some famous plant experiments (with cabbages I seem to remember) where they grew better if 'nice' things were said to them rather than nasty things. And I am sure a plant can 'tell' if a human has, what, a negative attitude towards them. Would they be able to tell if someone was a vegetarian or omnivore or frutarian? Would they care? I think they'd care more if that person was aggressive per se. I don't like cabbages much.. so…….
I am a vegetarian who eats animals for my health, sometimes. I do bless and thank the animals and sometimes the vegetables. Sometimes I feel my body would do best not eating at all. Not that I don't want to eat, but sometimes it feels like nothing goes into my body 'works'. In a way this is probably true, I believe all food is regarded by the body as 'foreign'. Somethings less so than others. I muse about blood sometimes, if I could get over a certain revulsion, I might drink blood like the Masai. As for not eating at all, there are breatharians, and I personally know several people who have gone through a process called the 'no-eating process' which was designed to reprogramme the body/mind to let go of food as sustenance. A hard core process - you had nothing but fake orange squash sips I believe, perhaps only brushed against your lips for some days. Many days. Those who did go through this say that it fundamentally changed their attitude to food - (as nourishment, as being 'good food' or 'bad food' etc) and some lived on virtually nothing for years, and looked fine (I saw them). A friend of mine did the process when she was pregnant.
So…. food for thought? ;-) stepping out of the kitchen to potter about a bit again…
So as you cook a delicious meal for us, Sandra [after all, we ARE in your kitchen], I reach out to Mushin who like most of MY friends, is non-vegetarian.
What an interesting concept - to see if fruitarians or breatharians or even plain ol vegetarians would be tolerated by plants better than fish eaters or meat eaters or vegetarians who eat animals for their health [ I know another person like that, Sandra].
I'd heard that plants respond to the CO2 they're getting as we speak to them; but obviously there's more to it. Of course, then I've to wonder with the wag who said- If plants are sensitive to what we say, how come my weeds don't wither and die?
More food for thought [as Sandra has stepped out of the kitchen, methinks words will be all the food we get for now!]
't is nice here in your kitchen, Sandra, and the guest are most delightful company!
As I've written in my new blog at http://blog.mushin.eu (sorry, didn't post it here yet, but the old plugin that allowed me to immediatly post it here as well doesn't work anymore and the manual path is so CUMBERSOME) the Number 1 characteristic of any living whole is metabolic. All beings exchange 'stuff' with the ecologies in which they are embedded.
So I guess you undertand that I don't really see what not eating is good for - except for periodic fasting; and, mind you, I take Breatharianism as a myth that doesn't stand up to real inquiry. So, for all of us that do eat there are lots of choices in what we eat. And as one that generally enjoys bowing to the wisdom of life's long evolutionary wisdom I feel that being an omnivore is ok - and I'm happy you vegetarians still like me in spite of eating dead animals from ocean, land and air.
But back to plants and their sensitivities: “We now know there's an ability of self-recognition in plants, which is highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it's actually there,” says Dr. Trewavas. “But why has no one come to grips with it? Because the prevailing view of a plant, even among plant biologists, is that it's a simple organism that grows reproducibly in a flower pot.”
This quote comes from a very interesting article that was already published in 2005 ”New research opens a window on the minds of plants” and which forms the background of my remarks on how a carrot feels when it's being eaten raw and alive…
Thing is, we can't get away from being metabolisers, meaning, we feed on what is outside us (and very often alive itself) and feed what is outside us with our 'waste'. What's more, we have legions of tiny organisms inside that do exactly the same, only we are it's ecologies and feed on their waste. And our skin is also a large place of symbiosis with countless micro-organisms that contribute to our integrity as a living whole, a self if you like.
Actually since all of life is metabolic by nature - every living whole eats and thereby takes parts of what is not itself and turns it into itself, and it lets go of parts of itself into the 'outside' ecology - we can't escape our destiny, as long as we are in the body, that is…
So that's my stew for the moment.