This will be pretty quick, but I really wanted to get this out to you guys!
When I lived in Hong Kong, one of my dear friends showed me a neat trick. There was a plant that grew wild in Yuen Long (the village where we lived) called 含羞草 (pinyin: hánxiū cǎo, pingyam: paachau chou). It translates into Shy Grass. This plant looked a little similar to a fern...but when you touched its leaves, it would instantly curl shut!
Why do I bring this up? The other day, as I was perusing Target's Dollar Aisle (as I am wont to do), I found some cute little Buzzy growing kits - a small pot, a dirt pellet, and a packet of seeds. They had the usual suspects - chives, flowers...and something called Sensitive Plant. I'd found my Shy Grass, and learned its English name to boot!
Officially called Mimosa Pudica, this grass is native to South America, but is now a weed across Asia as well. If you want a fun little project this month, head out to Target and see if they still have these little kits!
If you'd like to learn more about Mimosa Pudica, head over to Wikipedia.
Going off to Target now...
ReplyDeleteNice!
ReplyDeleteI had these weeds in my garden in Malaysia when I was a child. They're really cool.
That would be fun to grow with the kids....much better than the Venus flytrap I was considering to show how some plants react to human touch. ;)
ReplyDeleteBTW finally found Bamboo at Lowes...just got a small one as I noticed it had a warning of needing lots of water and care (and my black thumb and I don't get along too well with plants that need lots of attention....we'll see how it goes)
I surfed here after googling "sensitive plant" so I could figure out how to care for it once it grew...thank you for the info! :) Now that I know the name, it'll make it a lot easier to keep it going.
ReplyDelete