What plants can be heard when they are growing?
Growing up in the Midwest, USA I have heard of being able to hear corn grow on a quiet night. I believe I may have actually experienced this at one time while waiting for some co-workers in the middle of a cornfield on a calm, hot and humid July day. There was a very faint sound like broken glass rubbing together. There is actually some research to back up acoustics associated with corn growing:
"Material breakage is a lot like a microscopic earthquake: the sudden release of internal stresses sends sound waves radiating in every direction," Cook explained. "We're using special sensors called piezoelectric contact microphones to monitor the sounds emitted by corn stalks just before failure. This helps us understand the failure process more clearly."
Source: Can you hear corn grow? Yes!
There are other plants that grow just as fast or faster than corn, but I've never heard of actually being able to hear of any other type of plant grow. Are there any other plants that can be heard while they are growing?
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1 answer
It looks like the two species, that you can actually hear grow are corn and rhubarb, other plants also make sounds when they are growing, but in frequencies that humans can't hear.
Today, the cornfields of Nebraska and elsewhere in the world actually make sounds of growing.
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This “forcing” is so successful that you can actually hear the rhubarb growing if you go into the sheds. The buds cracking open is what makes the sound, and there is said to be a constant creaking during growing season.
Youtube video with the sound of corn growing.
Youtube video with the sound of rhubarb
Plant physiologists have known for several decades that plants emit sounds (Milburn and Johnson 1966). A bigger part of these ‘crackling’ or ‘whispering’ sounds are of transpiratory/hydraulic origin and are therefore related to the circulation of water and air within the plant as part of the transpiration process (Sandford and Grace 1985). The frequencies of the loudest acoustic emissions (the so-called cavitation pulses) lie mostly in the ultrasonic range, depending on the species-specific characteristics of plant tissues (Mayr and Rosner 2011).
For more reading,
- Rhubarb Grows So Fast You Can Hear It
- ‘Whispering’ plants
- Sound Garden: Can Plants Actually Talk and Hear?
- Are there plants that produce (audible) sound?
- Acoustic emissions from transpiring plants - new results and conclusions
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