The Musical Life of Plants Part 1: Hendrix Killed My Petunia

Peter has been busy once again. After this story about animals and music, he's moved on to music and plants:
"This is Dorothy Retallack, a woman who conducted experiments on the effects of different kinds of music on plant growth at Colorado Woman’s College in Denver in the 1970s. Her conclusion was that rock music (specifically Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge and Led Zeppelin) could retard plant growth and eventually cause them to die. She found that the plants in her lab grew away from the loudspeaker playing rock after just a few days. Plants listening to classical music - particularly North Indian sitar music - thrived, and grew towards the speaker.

Needless to say, the science of this has been heavily disputed (And these stoners believe that sounds at certain frequencies can cause a 18" plant grow up to 600 feet tall). But that hasn’t stopped Mrs Retallack from being championed by some Christian fundamentalists, who believe her findings apply to humans too, for example Terry Watkins who asserts "Rock music... has been scientifically proven to literally KILL!" His site also quotes Dr. Earl W. Flosdorf, who says that rock music can cook eggs. If you've ever used rock music to cook an egg, do let me know.

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

The plants I have do just fine. They are exposed to an almost continual listening party of deep progressive house. With the occasional Tool, Velvet Revolver or Sex Pistols thrown in. I don't know who Vanilla Fudge is but with a name like that, no wonder the plants died.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:42 pm

Mythbusters recently did a show where they had a very well-controlled experiment on five different groups of plants grown under five different auditory conditions (silence, a CD of spoken compliments, a CD of spoken insults, a CD of happy classical music, and a CD of death metal). The death metal plants did the best by far, even after someone accidentally shut off the watering system a month in.

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:51 am

i think a major field of music has been neglected in these scholarly studies - funk. i want to know what effect james brown has on tulips, and whether parliament can be used to make an omlette.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:40 am

I did a little plant/music growth experiment for the Science Fair when I was in 4th grade. I had 3 groups: No music at all, Mozart, and Joan Jett..loud. The Joan Jett plants totally surpassed the others. There you have it again. Plants like to rock!

# posted by

lauren : 12:14 am

My friend and I just did athe same project for our Science Fair project , but the the results proved out to be classical prevailing then rap/r&b and last rock

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:23 pm

My friends and I did a similar experiment with one plant listening to classical music (I don't recall the composer but it was mostly strings) and another plant listening to Metallica, Godsmack, Korn, Slipknot, and a variety of screamo bands. Our results in that grade 11 Biology class had the rock plant (aka Lars) THRIVING and growing 8 cm in 2 days, whereas the classical plant (aka Ludwig) barely grew at all and eventually died!

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:21 am

Jeez, you don't know who Vanilla Fudge is (was)? First album = change of paradigm!

Best, Old Guy.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:24 am

wow. i had no idea!!!!

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:40 pm

i've had to do this experiment a number of times for biology. everytime the conditions under which the plants were surviving was the same and the music never changed- everytime i had a different result...

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:53 am

It is awsome how people did it in 11th grade because i am doing it in 7th you guy help ha alot especial fluffy that said something about the Mythbusters.
Thank you

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:34 pm

Sorry for the spelling! :)

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:35 pm

I think someone needs to study more to get a definite answer about the effects of certain music on plants, and I think that, considering how erratic these results are, for example, that maybe 2 different plants may react differently to the same music, or lets say even two seemingly similar pieces of music may actually be quite different when it comes to the soundwaves emitted.(which is actualy what affects plants in the first place). A lot of work needs to be done to say anything for certain.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:04 am

Maybe, like people, plants have different tastes when it comes to music. Maybe that's why there is such different test results. Some plants may enjoy rockin out and others may prefer easy listening. I know if i were made to listen to country 24/7 i would probably want to die.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:44 am

Why hasn't anyone conducted this experiment with Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants?

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:42 am

ev, ofis, mutfak, & mobilya dekorasyon rehberi http://www.mobilya.cc/

# posted by

SaLVaToRe : 9:25 am

All I know is that modern Christian music makes me want to commit suicide. New country music is second worst on that list. I've got a question... Do different types of plants like different types of music? Seriously. Our plants do great on a regular diet of everything from Chopin to Marilyn Manson. I like Radiohead the best and I haven't heard any complaints from the plants. Maybe plants like variety in their music listening... just like humans.

# posted by

Weetus : 8:00 pm

I enjoy rock music, I find it funny that 'rock music is scientifically proven to Kill'.
There are many reasons behind this, its loud, noisy, has bad language in it, and bad concepts aswell. It refers to sex, drugs, killing, suicide, etc.
Thats certainly not going to stop me from listening to it ofcourse, I guess i just need to keep it away from my plants. ;)

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:35 am