12/25/2024
One day, evolutionary biologist Lilach Hadany wondered if plants could hear.
If they could it’d probably have something to do with flowers, she guessed, as pollination is key to plant reproduction.
She was right.
She and a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University decided to experiment with evening primrose which grows wild around Tel Aviv and whose long bloom time provides substantial quantities of nectar.
In the lab, they exposed the flowers to five different sound treatments: silence, the sound of bees buzzing, and computer-generated sounds in low, medium and high frequencies.
The flowers had no response to the silence or the computer-generated frequencies, they had an almost immediate response to the sound of bees, boosting the sugar content in their nectar by as much as 20% within 3 minutes.
In field trials, while the flowers seemed to tune out other noises, like the wind, they were particularly attuned to the low frequencies emitted by bees and other pollinators.
The temporary boost in sugar content apparently lasted for up to 6 minutes, as pollinators were 9 times more likely to visit a plant that had been previously visited by a pollinator within that time frame.
