Mimosa
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Mimosa
Jonathan Sanderson
Download film (right-click)Adult , Biology , Demonstration , Investigation
The ‘sensitive plant’ does its thing, in this short film made at the Eden Project in Cornwall.
Director's Notes:
You don’t need a good video camera to make a film for SciCast! This was filmed on my new mobile phone, the day after I got it. OK, so it’s blurry (I didn’t find the close-up mode until the following week), but it shows the sort of thing that can be done with a camera you carry around all day, every day.
This was filmed during a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall, which is an amazing place. If you visit, see if you can find this mimosa, and take some better-quality film of it!
For anyone wondering, the phone is a Nokia N95. It crashes a lot, but the video it shoots is very good indeed. Look out for more stuff filmed with it soon. Notably, I’ve been hanging it off kites…
SciCast Notes:
Mimosa pudica is a fascinating plant; read up on it at Wikipedia. It’s known as ‘the sensitive plant,’ or ‘shyness grass’ - when gently touched, its leaves fold up, as you can see in the film. There’s another Wikipedia page about plant movement here.
What neither of those pages give is a description of the mechanism involved. If you know more, please explain in the comments here. Thanks!
— Jonathan