Sunday, August 20, 2006

Mimosa pudica - Touch-me-not

Family:Leguminosae
Common name: Touch-me-not, sensitive plant, malu-malu
This is a plant that kept me enthralled each time I came across it in my childhood because the leaves close immediately in response to touch hence the common name "Touch-me-not". I never paid much attention to the rest of the plant and the absence of flowers did not bother me. It was the leaves that held my rapt attention the way none of my science teachers ever did with their perpetual textbook descriptions of the living and the dead in nature. When I saw this patch of mimosa right next to a road with a bus-stop across, I stepped into their midst and for the first time took an ardent interest in the flowers, buds and pods and discovered parts of the plant I had never seen before. There were a few yellow flowers that looked like they belonged to the same family as the pink ones and I cannot identify it for sure. But from my search on the internet, the yellow flowers seemed to look like a plant called Acacia dealbata (Silver wattle) that originates in Australia.
I found out from one of the books I have that this yellow version of the mimosa flower belongs to the Neptunia Plena or commonly known as Aquatic sensitive plant. It originates in Tropical America.

1 comment:

Dark Matter said...

love the yellow one...