Music-giving Plants

Have you heard that playing music helps plants grow? It is a lovely idea — but careful experiments have never really shown it to be true.

Here is something about plants and music that is true, and rather wonderful: plants can make music. A biologist from England, Dr Linda Long, discovered that the molecular structure of the proteins found in plants can be turned into music. The question is how.

All living matter contains proteins. Proteins are the basic building blocks of life and are essential for cell growth, muscular movement and transmission of hereditary characteristics.

A vine that looks like a clef. Clef is a musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes.

Seven sequences for seven notes
Proteins are made up of a group of an organic compound called amino acids. These amino acids are made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (and sometimes sulphur).

Dr. Long grouped these combinations into seven sequences. Then she related the seven sequences with the seven musical notes – a note per sequence.

After this she created a software which simply read the structure of a protein and converted it into the corresponding musical notes. They thought they would get random notes; instead the sequence formed a tune.

Each protein in a plant has its own specific tune, which means that if an organism has 100 proteins, 100 musical compositions can be created. Dr Long, who plays the keyboard apart from studying plant proteins, has now turned artist.

She has made a 25 minute CD called Music of Plants by putting together the tunes created by certain proteins found in the common coriander and mustard plant, among others.

For her next musical project she intends to turn the proteins found in the human body into music. And considering the human body has an estimated 30,000 different proteins, she certainly has her work cut out!

Editor’s note (July 2026): We removed an earlier section that said music makes plants grow, and that a gadget could read a plant’s feelings. Careful experiments have not shown these to be true. The part about turning plant proteins into music is real, and we have kept it.