Good news Charles ...flowers can hear
GARDENERS such as Prince Charles who claim that talking to plants encourages them to grow have long been seen as a little potty.
But scientists have discovered evidence which suggests the Royal may actually be right and they could be listening to him.
Biologists at Tel Aviv University in Israel have found that flowers can act as a plant’s “ears” to help them detect the sound of approaching insects. And they discovered that not only do plants appear to hear the buzz of approaching bees, they also respond to them by producing sweeter nectar.
When the researchers played recordings of flying bees to evening primrose flowers, within three minutes the sugar concentrations in the nectar of its flowers increased.
The fluid, produced to attract pollinating insects, was on average 20 per cent higher in flowers exposed to the buzz compared to those left in silence or exposed to higher pitched sounds. Professor Lilach Hadany, who led the study, said: “Our results document for the first time that plants can rapidly respond to pollinator sounds in an ecologically relevant way. We found flowers vibrated mechanically in response to these sounds, suggesting a plausible mechanism where the flower serves as the plant’s auditory sensory organ.
“Both the vibration and the nectar response were frequency-specific. The flowers responded to pollinator sounds, but not to higher frequency sound.” However, Prof Hadany and her team said a plant’s ability to respond to pollinators may be inhibited in city environments or beside a busy road. “These advantages can be diminished in very noisy environments, suggesting possible sensitivity of pollination to external noises,” she said.
While plants require water, sunlight and the right temperature to grow, it was widely believed they did not have senses in the way animals do. But the study, published on the open-science website BioRxiv, suggests the efforts of gardeners who talk to their plants may not be in vain.
“Plants’ ability to hear has implications way beyond pollination – plants could potentially hear and respond to herbivores, other animals, the elements, and possibly other plants,” Prof Hadany added.
The Prince of Wales is among those who have publicly admitted to talking to plants and a month-long experiment conducted by the Royal Horticultural Society in 2009 found female voices appear to speed up the growth of tomatoes.
The research offers a possible explanation – women’s voices were at the right frequency for the plants to hear.