Aug 19, 2020
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My boyfriend’s newest terrarium with sensitive plant seedlings 😍
got myself a baby mimosa pudica
How she moves 🌿👈 Mimosa Pudica - Shameplant 9.17.17
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.
The babies that I got from the greenhouse 😍 The top three are begonias, which are by far my favorite plants. It’s hard to believe that all three related. I want to see if I can breed them or something because I’m a genetics nerd and I want to see what would happen. I like the idea of crossing the middle begonia with the one on the bottom. I like the shape of the middle one and the color of the third one so if they ever make flowers at the same time, you best believe I’m doing some experimenting. I have one other begonia that I sadly lost already, but its stem is still living as far as I know and I’m hoping that it will miraculously recover.
I don’t remember what the white plant is called but the leaves are this amazing velvety texture. It’s a little sad right now because I’m still trying to figure out how much water it likes. The new leaves that it’s putting out are far less crispy so I think I’m getting it.
I have no clue what the bottom plant is. My boyfriend picked up a plant and a big chunk came off. I was like
<.<
>.>
And then I proplifted. There are signs that say not to do that but it fell off by itself and I assume it’ll just go in the garbage so I shoved it in my pocket and it seems to be doing quite well with me.
AND I got a sensitive plant! I’ve wanted one for a very long time. I just think they’re cute. I like to stroke one leaf every morning and make it do the thing. I only allow myself to do it once because I’m certain that folding its leaves requires energy and I don’t want to be sapping too much of it.
Hopefully there will be updates to come!
botany mutuals… i keep thinking abt how interesting it would be to try to condition a sensitive plant to recognize that a certain type of touch correlates with a certain outcome,, like we know they are capable of learning touch ≠ danger and stopping their defense response, so wouldn’t it be interesting to try something like touching one set of leaves and not harming the plant, and then touching another set of leaves and exposing that set to fire or something. have the sensitive plant scientists done this already. what if a sensitive plant learned to only collapse certain leaves and not others. i literally think about this daily