Lewis Capaldi has come out in top place in a survey of the the ten most popular musicians played to help plants grow.
The bizarre survey picked the music of Someone You Love hitmaker Lewis as being more beneficial for plants over other artists including Davie Bowie.
During lockdown our plants have become like our little pets and many of us have started talking to them. Others have gone further still: playing music to our plants to encourage them to sprout.
The impact of music on plant growth has been hotly debated by scientists for years, with lots of studies conducted to find out if different vibrations can really stimulate growth.
In a survey of 1150 plant parents between the ages of 25-34 by Pointless Plants, 48 per cent admitted that they’d played their plants music to stimulate growth.
Out of those a whopping 62 per cent had Lewis Capaldi as their most played artist, followed by BTS at 55 per cent, Taylor Swift at 51 per cent, Tame Impala at 40 per cent and Elton John at 37 per cent. Other artists like Stormzy, Rihanna, and David Bowie also made the top ten.
West Lothian lad Lewis is obviously favoured by many and the figures are not that surprising considering his debut album was recently revealed as the most streamed of 2020 on Spotify.
There have actually been numerous studies which have suggested that, yes, playing music for plants is a great way to boost their growth.
In 1962, Indian botanist Dr. T. C. Singh found that his balsam plants grew 20% more when he played them classical music. Experimenting with different plants and different kinds of music, Dr. T. C. Singh concluded that yes, music did in fact help plants to grow.
In 1973, Dorothy Retallack, a student at Colorado Women’s College, also carried out experiments, split testing plants with different kinds of sound. The suggestion was that yes, plants did respond to sound.
Dorothy played classical music to some of her plants and rock music - Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix - to others. Interestingly she found that those who lived on a diet of hardcore rock died sooner than those treated to gentler classical music.
It may be the vibrations more than the sounds that affects plants.
In a TV interview, the head researcher at Plant Life Balance, Dr Dominique Hes, said that plants did enjoy music and that it did help them to grow.
She suggested three top tips for those looking to play their plants music:
Plants thrive with music that falls between 115Hz and 250Hz - these vibrations come closest to mimicking the sounds of nature.
Classical is the best music to play to plants.
Don’t play music to plants for more than three hours a day!
