When I was a child, Ma often used to tell me about the touch-me-not plants. She had come across them decades ago when grandpa had been posted in Siligudi. Even as a child with an impressionable mind, I would often look at her in disbelief. I grew up in Delhi and as long as I was there, Ma was unable to produce a specimen of the touch-me-not plant before me. Then I read about it in my school biology book (class six I suppose) and even then it remained one of those exotic species of plants that you merely read about in school textbooks. Mimosa pudica, 'nice', I would often think.
I saw the touch-me-not plant for the first time barely three years ago on a trek near Bangalore. The discovery was accidental. On touching one, I don't know who suffered a greater visible change - me or the Mimosa?
Of course now, I am much better acquainted with the plant. I see it often - usually as a weed that has taken roots amidst other prettier flowering plants. Though Mimosa is a bit of a beauty itself - it bears bright pink globular flowers:
