Old Forestry Traditions and Modern Chronobiological Research: Lunar-Cycle-Related Sowing Time Influences Effectively Initial Plant Growth

After a preliminary trial, 12 successive sowings (with 4 repetitions each) of the panafrican tree Maesopsis eminii had been realized, at alternating dates 2 days before Full Moon (FM) and 2 days before New Moon (NM) [1]. The mean height of the young plants 4 months after sowing was by 3 centimeters (= ca. 19%) larger for sowings before FM compared to sowings before NM. This phenomenon, now re-evaluated by Halberg´s cosinor regression, was statistically significant partly on the level α = 0.05, partly 0.1.