Pangolin Science: The Effects of Music on Plant Growth

They're a funny breed, scientists, what with their grubby white coats with biros leaking into the top pocket, bald heads and nhs spectacles - that and the way they used to attach polygraphs to plants.  They've been telling us for a long time that music has a beneficial effect on plant growth, so we conducted a survey to see what our Pangolin readers had to say.

Tobias Pumblechook of Stechford isn't so sure.

"Someone told me that playing music to plants makes them grow better, but it's a load of poppycock.  I've tried talking to plants and got only abuse in return, too.  Why, I was making encouraging whoops and shrieks to my vegetable patch, and even playing it highlights from the William Tell Overture - when my neighbours called the police.  The psychiatrist they called out told me to stop being a stupid pillock, and then made me walk home.  I thought I might do better with indoor plants, but I'm damned if I can get my herbaceous border into the living room.  Once again, the so-called experts get it wrong!"

Delphinia Spragg from Pratt's Bottom couldn't disagree more.

"Not only can music make plants grow better, but I'm convinced that music can turn people into plants. My seventeen-year-old son, Crucifer, listens to some right crap through his headphones during both of his waking hours - and he looks more and more like a cabbage every day!"

On This Day...

Roving reporter, Rupert Besley, has delved into the extensive Pangolin archives - held in the basement of the Mappin Terraces at London Zoo - to take our beloved readers for a bit of a rolling stagger down Memory Lane. This was no mean feat as that worthy terrain is infested with emus.

25 Years Ago

Residents of Alma Terrace in the picturesque Hampshire village of Little Humping were plunged into darkness shortly before midnight, when a streetlamp bulb blew close to the junction with Sebastopol Road. ‘This is the second time in thirteen and a half months,’ said local resident Trevor Pidcock, 59, whose brother Norman, 61, had a similar thing happen to him in Argentina just over 12 years previously. Red-faced council officials were busy liaising with technical staff in a bid to solve the ongoing problem.

50 Years Ago

Scientists from around the world gathered in Denmark for the first test-firing of a new generation of ground-to-air missiles built entirely of Lego. The launch mission was aborted when two sections of rocket wing fell off in the opening seconds of final countdown.

5 Years Ago

The memorial service took place yesterday for Lady Eglantine Hart-Farquhar, late of the Bombay Rifles. Lady Hart-Farquhar, whose interests were listed in Who’s Who as tadpoling and kung-fu, was a distinguished poet as well as a crackshot with a submachine gun. Above all she will be remembered in the village of Farquharsgrove for her unusual outfits and her generous loan each year of the small field known as The Marsh for staging the village fete. A packed church joined in a hearty rendition of the final anthem, ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’.

Edifying Thoughts as it's Sunday

The Pope was in the Vatican

Where the paint was all a’peelin’

He decided to do the whole place up

Michelangelo got the ceilin’

Plenty of folk dropping in... and out...

Please feel free to add your own comments, observations and feedback below. Our visitors' book has lines in it, of course.  Mr & Mrs Boaring of Pinner had written their comment on the loo roll.

Sensory Garden