Wandering through the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, renowned for housing one of the most diverse collection of living plants on the planet, you can be sure to fall under the spell of its notorious residents. There are the mighty oaks, thirteen-storey-tall redwoods, the sacred and endangered Pōhutukawa tree from Aotearoa, the striking spectacle of the giant Amazon waterlily. If lucky, you may even spot a flowering Titan arum with its unbearable corpse-like stench.

Among a treasure of distinct forms, colours and smells, you will also start discerning the relatively smaller, closer-to-the-ground dwellers, those whose feats are not displayed by virtue of their sheer size, but their actions. Action? A strange thought, perhaps, when talking of plants, given our misperception of them as stock-still and oblivious. However, it is precisely because her delicate fern-like leaves will suddenly curl up and droop to shy away from our touch, that many enjoy this intriguing plant and her weird performance.

Best known as touch-me-not or the sensitive plant, we are, of course, speaking of Mimosa pudica. Quietly, the highly touch-sensitive Mimosa recomposes herself by uncurling her leaves and pulling her stems upright again within a few minutes after the ordeal. This plant’s behaviour, especially her distinctive ability to ‘play dead’ in reaction to external disturbance such as touch, has captured human attention since ancient times and ignited the flames of imagination for centuries.