Plants don’t have ears. But they can still detect sound

In 1986when, he was a mere prince, King Charles, Britain’s eco-minded monarch, told a television interviewer that it was important to talk to one’s plants. He was widely mocked. But that piece of princely wisdom seems to have been ahead of its time, for there is now plenty of evidence that plants can detect sound, react to it, and even, perhaps, produce it.Scientists have been experimenting with playing sounds to plants since at least the 1960s, during which time they have been exposed to everything from Beethoven to Michael Jackson. Over the years, evidence that this sort of thing can have an effect has been growing. One paper, published in 2018, claimed that an Asian shrub known as the telegraph plant grew substantially larger leaves when exposed to 56 days of Buddhist chants—but not if it was exposed to Western pop music, or silence. , published last year, found that marigolds and sage plants exposed to the noise of traffic from a busy motorway suffered stunted growth, and produced a range of stress compounds.