A Plant that Moves and Knows What Time to Get Up : Mimosa pudica
Monday 2 November 2026 at 00:56
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Edited by Richard Walker, Monday 2 November 2026 at 01:03
I've just bought a 'Sensitive Plant' or 'Touch-Me-Not', Mimosa pudica. Mine is quite small at the moment and nowhere near flowering, but I found a good photo on Wikimedia [1].
This plant is remarkable in more than one way. Firstly, if you touch it, a kind of impulse runs through its foliage, and the plant immediately folds up nearby leaves. It's this behaviour that causes Linnaeus to dub it pudica, 'shy'.
Even more remarkably it has a circadian rhythm. During the hours of darkness the plant furls its leaves but begins unfurling them ahead of the dawn; it's got a biological clock.
And it can learn; if its leaves are touched repeatedly without any harm being caused to them, it will come to disregard these stimuli.
Mimosa pudica , a member of the pea and lentil family, came originally from the Caribbean and Central America but is now widespread in parts of the world with warm climates, and a weed in some places. In temperate regions it is a fairly common indoor plant.
For some interesting botanical history of the plant see the article Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) on the Cambridge University Botanic Garden website.
[1] Suyash.dwivedi, Mimosa pudica in September month, Wikimedia, Licensed Under Creative Commons.
A Plant that Moves and Knows What Time to Get Up : Mimosa pudica
I've just bought a 'Sensitive Plant' or 'Touch-Me-Not', Mimosa pudica. Mine is quite small at the moment and nowhere near flowering, but I found a good photo on Wikimedia [1].
This plant is remarkable in more than one way. Firstly, if you touch it, a kind of impulse runs through its foliage, and the plant immediately folds up nearby leaves. It's this behaviour that causes Linnaeus to dub it pudica, 'shy'.
Even more remarkably it has a circadian rhythm. During the hours of darkness the plant furls its leaves but begins unfurling them ahead of the dawn; it's got a biological clock.
And it can learn; if its leaves are touched repeatedly without any harm being caused to them, it will come to disregard these stimuli.
Mimosa pudica , a member of the pea and lentil family, came originally from the Caribbean and Central America but is now widespread in parts of the world with warm climates, and a weed in some places. In temperate regions it is a fairly common indoor plant.
For some interesting botanical history of the plant see the article Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica) on the Cambridge University Botanic Garden website.
[1] Suyash.dwivedi, Mimosa pudica in September month, Wikimedia, Licensed Under Creative Commons.