Demonstration

You walk through a meadow, ignore and step over a plant that has delicate pale pink and purple flowers. Here is the wild thing, you may just miss a chance to be a future teller! 

 

Mimosa Pudica, originally from the tropical Americas and now can almost spot it everywhere around the world, is the magical and underrated prophet in the plant world. However, half of the world sees it as a shameless unwelcome guest, which invades and breaks the local ecosystem. The name may sound unfamiliar, but hey, nobody knows shame more than it, the more common name for it is Shampelant. 

 

But of course, it knows far more than that.

 

The appellation is from its trait that the leaflets would quickly turn inward when they are touched or shaken. As an action plant that closes its leaves when given a stimulus, which integrates both sensing and actuating mechanisms. However, the real magic behind the Shameplant isn’t just its touch-sensitive leaves. You see, when you poke it, the speed change at which its leaflets curl can give clues about the humidity in the air, helping people predict rain hours in advance.

 

And when without external factors, Shameplant's leaflets stretch during the daytime and close during the nighttime, until it flips its own scripts... Back in the 1990s, Japanese scientists already noticed the incredible specialism of the Shameplant that before the earthquakes, the electrical signals in the plants' stems would do a reverse version of the norm, and when it happens, there usually will be an earthquake soon. So next time, even not for a run-for-your-life earthquake situation, to avoid a sudden pouring rain or just brush it off for fun, keep an eye on these plants that may be more trustworthy than the weather forecast.

 

The future teller is more than this:

• More general introduction of the plant for the basic information.

• Extend with interesting anecdotes that attract people’s attention.

• Mimosa Pudica the weeds and Mimosa the expensive perfume material?

• Conflicts of Interests: Poison or Medicine? Other traits like its poisonousness towards insects, and how some countries use it as medicine.