You might already know that plants have been proven to respond when humans speak to them. But scientists have discovered that plants are doing more than listening; they’re talking, too. It turns out, plants can communicate among their own species through a variety of ways – both audible and inaudible – that are beyond humans’ ability to detect unaided.
Cannabis wasn’t the focal point of the studies cited in this article, but cannabis possesses the same basic structure as that of the plants under scrutiny. So, it’s fair to assume that your weed is listening to you and talking about you every bit as much as these other plants are. Granted, your buds aren’t likely to break into song like they’re in “Little Shop of Horrors” (disappointing news, indeed), but still, they’re chatting away.
Here’s how plants hear and speak.
First off, how do you hear something? Through subatomic vibrations.
To understand sound, you need to understand sound’s basic ingredients. These are actually the same ingredients as those of every physical thing in existence: particles. When you trace the source of something physical down to its deepest root, that’s what you find. Particles are smaller than atoms, and even smaller than the protons, electrons and neutrons inside atoms.
At that scale – the subatomic scale – particles are in constant motion because of the effects of gravity, electromagnetism and other forces. Whenever a force disturbs a particle’s equilibrium, it generates two resultant forces: one that acts, and one that restores. The acting force pushes the particle away, and the restoring force pulls it back. This pushing-and-pulling effect is called vibration.
For sound to manifest, the vibrating particles need to travel from the disturbance’s point of origin, such as a guitar string that’s been plucked, to another point, such as your inner ear. This happens if the particles are carried across the air through what are called sound waves. At some point, the sound waves travel far enough to reach your eardrum, and they cause your eardrum to vibrate too. This is how you experience sound.
Being a mere byproduct of cause-and-effect, clusters of vibrating particles make no distinction between fauna and flora. For that reason, the existence of sound isn’t conditioned upon depositing vibrations onto eardrums; it’s conditioned upon depositing them onto anything equally capable of vibrating. There’s a lot more to the concept of hearing than you might think.
For another Head Magazine study on subatomic activity, read “Can Cannabis Raise Your Vibration?”.
So, can your plants really hear you? Yes, just not like you’d think.
Plant cells are vibration-sensitive structures. Sawera Shahid of Patch Plants explains this scientifically, in the context of phytoacoustics:
“Plant cells are enclosed in rigid cell walls and filled with fluid under pressure (turgor pressure). These structures are mechanically sensitive — they respond to physical forces including touch, gravity, wind, and potentially sound vibrations. Research into plant and plant cell responses to mechanical stimulation has established that plants cells do respond to physical forces by altering their biological activity.”
Whether something reacts to receiving vibrations via sound waves is determined by the audible frequency of those waves. This frequency, measured in hertz (Hz), refers to the rate at which the sound waves pulse per second while in transit. Under normal circumstances, the human ear perceives sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. To put that in perspective, a deep bass note has a frequency of 50 Hz, and a high-pitched whistle has a frequency of 10,000 Hz.
The sound produced by adult human voices spans 100 Hz to 120 Hz for lower-sounding voices and 160 Hz to 235 Hz for higher-sounding voices, and children’s voices span 220 Hz to 330 Hz. Plants’ cellular activity is stimulated by sound waves in the frequency range of 100 Hz to 500 Hz, with 115 Hz to 250 Hz being where they react the most favorably.
Because of the overlap between plants’ and humans’ acoustic capabilities, plants are mechanically capable of hearing you speak. And, according to a study published in “Oecologia,” plants can even tell sounds apart, discerning between wind blowing, insects singing and caterpillars chewing. So, if “hearing you” is defined as the act of receiving and processing the sound waves you emit through speech, then plants can hear you speak.
If you’re ready to raise a plant that will hang on your every word, read “How to Grow Your First Marijuana Plant.”
How do plants talk to one another? Lots of ways!
Plants can communicate inaudibly via chemical and physical systems, or audibly via sound waves higher than the highest frequency detectable by the unaided human ear. For the first of these, Shahid’s extensive analysis of plant communication revealed three methods: airborne chemical signals, root exudates and mycorrhizal networks.
The airborne chemicals released are volatile organic compounds that land on neighboring plants and trigger defensive responses in those plants to help them prepare to fend off an attack. Root exudates consist of sugars, amino acids, organic acids and signaling compounds in the soil, all of which are used to perform the equivalent of reading and writing among plants. The third method, dubbed the “Wood Wide Web” or “Internet of Fungus,” uses a massive web of fungus that spans entire forests, touching every plant in it. Like sending emails to someone on the other side of the world, plants can share threat information with plants on the other side of the forest, as well as share nutrients and carbon compounds with them.
Weed’s own Wood Wide Web derives from its intimate relationship with the soil it grows in – a phenomenon that spawned a movement to establish cannabis terroir. Photo by Mark Stebnicki / pexels.com
What about audible communication though? Research on plants’ ability to produce sounds is surprisingly more than 100 years old, so contemporary discussions about this are adding to a body of knowledge, not initiating one. Here are two amazing discoveries in this field from the 2020s alone.
In 2025, researchers in Spain conducted a study that analyzed the peculiarly precise acoustic properties of leaves. They found that the frequencies of the sound waves created by vibrations triggered by wind or another source of disturbance were amplified or dampened by leaf architecture (thickness, texture, etc.). The conclusion was that sound waves given off by leaves, overall, constitute a mechanism of general communication or a means of driving herbivores away (comparable to yelling at someone). Either way, the leaves were “talking.”
Two years before that, researchers at Tel Aviv University actually recorded stressed tomato and tobacco plants making sounds at frequencies up to 250,000 Hz. The noise is described by Science Daily as “click-like sounds, similar to the popping of popcorn.” When plants were healthy, they “clicked” once per hour, at most; when they were dehydrated or injured, they “clicked” dozens of times per hour. Here’s how they did it, according to a Science Array article:
“The answer lies in the physics of plant hydraulics. When plants experience drought stress, tiny air bubbles form inside their xylem vessels – the tubes that carry water from roots to leaves. This process, called cavitation, creates micro-explosions as bubbles collapse. Each collapse generates a sharp, high-frequency click. It’s the sound of a plant’s circulatory system breaking down.”
At another university in Israel, over 80 years before the Tel Aviv researchers heard plants talking, the “Father of Cannabis Research” was conducting studies that made an even greater impact on international botany – and countless other fields.
Main Takeaway
If you could decode the messages being sent out and received by your cannabis plants, would you change anything about the way you grow them? The sound waves you emit as you talk to or around your plants are evoking a reaction, and the plants are using airborne or root-to-root communications to tell their buddies about it.
Since you’ve got a degree of control over it, try to make sure that whatever they’re saying is only good stuff: “I have plenty of water.” “I’m safe from pests.” “I have all the nutrients I need.” “I get plenty of sunlight.” For all we know, they might even be saying things like, “My human is the sweetest person,” or “My human tells me every day that I’m special.” Why not indulge in that fantasy and show your plants some love? Undoubtedly, they’ve earned it.
The information in this article and any included images are for educational purposes only. This information is neither a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional legal advice or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about laws, regulations or your health, you should always consult an attorney, physician or other licensed professional.
Kathleen Hearons is a writer, editor, linguist and voice over actor from Los Angeles. She specializes in creative writing and research-intensive analysis and reporting.
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