TOUCHWOOD

Mimosa pudica

the sensitive plant 

I've decided that when I'm 100 I'll grow out of the fascination with plants that move. Perhaps by then I'll also no longer be giving my illustrated talk on 'Triffids: Moving Plants', but who knows, perhaps I will!

Meanwhile, do share some of my delights with this most sensitive and delightful of plants. Grow indoors (outdoors in summer) as a half-hardy annual.

Here's a sequence of photos to show the effects of touch. First on the leaflets....

 then the whole leaf collapses as shown ....its leaf-stem (petiole) is hinged at the bottom.

Why? Well look at the before and after pics on this seedling.

Before..'Oh look, wow', says the hungry herbivore, 'Dinner!', and starts to munch. And to his bewilderment his food-bowl disappears in front of his very eyes leaving only 'dead, bare branches'. And if the hungry herbivore needed another message to confirm that 'this is not edible', he'd have also had a mouthful of thorns to discourage him!

Let's see it all again 'cos it's so much fun:

 All this and flowers too!  

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