Does talking to a plant help it grow?

This is a subject that I found in my science book once and decided to do a little research on the subject.

On Yahoo it says it turns out there may be some truth that talking to plants help it grow.   They say that plants need carbon dioxide to grow and when you talk to a plant, you breathe on it, giving it extra infusion of CO2. However, for this to have any effect on your plant, you would have to spend hours every day at close quarters.   So, having this said, there is some truth to the statement but I will go into a little more detail from other sources.

Some research was done on this topic at Penn State and this is what they came up with.

In a 1986 interview, England's Prince Charles discussed his gardening habits, commenting, "I just come and talk to the plants, really.  Very important to talk to them; they respond."

The theory that plants benefit from human conversation dates to 1848, when German professor Gustav Fechner published the book Nanna (Soul-life of Plants).  The idea is a popular one, and has spawned several more books and even an album--recorded in 1970 by an enterprising dentist--titled "Music to Grow Plants By."  But will crooning compliments to your ficus reallly have effect on its growth?

"There isn't a lot of research in this area," says Rich Marini, head of Penn State's horticulture department, "but there is evidence that plants respond to sound."  In fact, plants react readily to a host of environmental stimuli, as the ability to respond to changing environments is vital to their survival.  Explans Marini, "Wind or vibration will induce changes in plant growth.  Since sound is essentially vibration, my guess is that vibration is causing a response."

Research supports Marini's guess.  A 2007 paper from scientists at south Korea's National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology proposed that two genes involved in a plant's response to light--known as rbcs and Ald--are turned on by music played at 70 dicibels.  "This is about the level of a normal conversation," says Marini.  The Korean researchers found differing responses depending on the frequency of the sound.  The higher the frequency, the more active was the gene response.

But other studies suggest that conversation may not be enough, notes Marini.  A Canadian paper showed that seed germination is influenced by sound at 92 decibels--much louder than one would normally speak.

There was a post on eHow that was very interesting as well.   They proposed that women's voices produced more growth than men talking to a plant.  They said, "An experiment was conducted at FHS Garden Wisley in Surrey to determine if voices had any effect on plant growth.  A variety of male and female voices were chosen to plan through headphones to 10 tomato plants over the course of a month.  The results concluded that plants responded to female voices.  The plants stimulated by female voices grew an inch more than those stimulated by male voices which in some cases, grew less than a plant left completely alone."

So having all of that said, take what you want from it.   I found all of it very interesting!

Noah