By Rebecca Le Jeune, Third year, Politics and International Relations
Plant electrophysiology sonification is a bit of a mouthful. Recently, there’s been a noticeable rise in digital devices that claim to make plants ‘sing.’ I beg your garden?! I hadn’t come across this before, but the products are real, often quite spenny, and increasingly popular enough to sustain a small industry of their own. Their targeted audience is spiritually superior and rooted in a Clifton Boho gentrified living room. So before we get too carried away, it’s worth asking a more basic question: what are these devices doing, how do they work?
The devices sold online don't capture airborne sound from plants, alas, there are no live jam sessions picked up by a microphone. Instead, it taps into the plant’s bioelectrical activity. Unbeleafable scientific evidence has historically shown us that plants generate structured electrical signals. Electrodes clipped to a leaf sense tiny shifts in resistance, voltage, and conductivity inside the tissue. Because the raw signal is very weak, it’s first boosted by an amplifier and then converted into digital data through an analog-to-digital converter. Software maps those fluctuations onto musical features such as pitch, loudness, and rhythm. That data is then sent to a software synthesiser and speaker system, which produce the audible sound. You’re hearing a creative translation of electricity into music: tada, jazz hands.
You might be thinking: don’t all living things bring out electrical activity? In broad terms, yes. If you really wanted to, you could try to capture the electrical waves of the mould growing in a uni bathroom. You can moss around with it as much as you’d like, and the musical output would change depending on the organism and how you choose to map the signals to sound. What gets called ‘plant music’ is essentially the translation of bioelectricity. Plants don’t have neurons, but they still generate electrical signals, and fungi do too. The biggest challenge would probably be practical: mould is microscopic and fragile, so attaching electrodes without disturbing it would be much trickier than clipping sensors to a leaf. Still, the underlying idea is the same, just a more fiddly experiment. Maybe a project for later.
It would be inaccurate to say that plants emit nothing at all. Studies show that plants produce ultrasonic airborne clicks that humans cannot hear. These have been recorded and compressed into artworks of their own, known as ‘plant orchestras’. Many animals such as moths and rodents can detect ultrasound, so these sounds could influence herbivore behaviour, and plant interactions. Interestingly stressed plants emit far more clicks than healthy ones, suggesting that plants are part of an acoustic environment we are only beginning to study.
That was all about whether we can hear plants. But can they hear us? You might know the 1976 album Mother Earth’s Plantasia. Nicheness backed by The Guardian who described it as ‘an underground hit’. It was composed for plants and their planters (caretakers if you will) to listen to, together, and allegedly make plants grow faster and bigger. Whimsical as that idea is, plant growth depends on many variables: temperature, moisture, light, and root space, to name a few. It is difficult to isolate the effect of a particular playlist from all those factors. Still, the broader question remains: what about sound itself?
Has granny lost it, or does speaking kindly to plants make them grow quicker… Few studies focus directly on human speech and plant growth, but research does suggest that sound waves can influence plant physiology. Variations in frequency and intensity can affect development, although the mechanisms remain unclear. The important distinction is that plants respond to vibrations, not to the emotional meaning of words. The TikTok experiments comparing complimented and bullied plants are entertaining, but they are not controlled science. Some reports suggest that mild vibrations may support growth while harsher vibrations can be detrimental. Whatever you do, do not yell at your plant.
Anna Dunphy
All of this leaves us in a middle ground. Plants probably do not appreciate compliments in any human sense, but careful attention to their environment certainly helps them thrive. Sending positive vibes may improve your mental health if not theirs. The practical takeaway is simple: attentive care matters. Noticing a browning leaf early can signal a problem with water, light, or air quality. In that sense, good plant care is less about serenading them and more about consistent observation. You grow, girl.
Featured Image: Photo by Rebecca Le Jeune, Illustrated by Jemima Choi
Would you buy a plant electrophysiology sonification device?
