When I was in the plant store buying my succulent and vegetables, I saw a sensitive plant.
The store had put a sign by it encouraging people to touch it and watch it move. Sensitive plants have an unusual habit: If touched, they curl up their leaves. I understand that’s fascinating, irresistible for many, and a good selling point for the store.
But most plants don’t like to be touched a lot, even if they’re not sensitive plants. Too much touching can result in part or all of the plant withering or dying.
Plants find it very hard to move. This is why most plants move too slowly for people to see it. Plants that move quickly are using up a huge amount of their energy reserves.
The sensitive plant with the sign next to it? Leaves were already withering, turning brown, and dropping off. It did not look happy. It looked like it was being overworked by all the physical attention, and like if that kept up it might not even survive.
Just because something can move, doesn’t mean it should spend its timein constant motion just because people find it fascinating. And just because something responds when you poke it does’t mean poking it to see the response is the best idea -- this can be a metaphor for a lot of things but I really mean it literally too. Sensitive plants can move fast, but it’s exhausting and not something they can keep up constantly. They remind me of a spider I was trying to get onto a piece of paper to take it outside -- I never touched it, but it died of overwork, because that kind of spider was only designed for short bursts of energy. I’m not a spider person (at the time, I was a barely-recovering full-blown arachnophobe) but I felt terrible when I learned what I’d done.
So try not to poke the sensitive plants, even if you find their responses amazing or interesting. It’s not very amazing or interesting to have a dead houseplant because you couldn’t resist poking at it.
