Bashfulplant

Mimosa pigra, called bashfulplant or giant sensitive plant, is a thorny leguminous shrub in the family Fabaceae native to tropical America from Mexico through Central America to northern Argentina, and now an aggressive invasive across tropical Africa, southeast Asia, and northern Australia. Plants reach up to 6 m tall, with greenish young stems becoming woody and armed with broad-based recurved prickles up to 7 mm long. Leaves are bright green, bipinnate, and 20-25 cm long, with a prickly rachis bearing up to 16 pairs of pinnae; each pinna carries numerous small linear-oblong leaflets that fold up sensitively when touched or at nightfall. Flowers are pale mauve to pink and crowded into globose heads about 1 cm in diameter, each head containing roughly 100 individual flowers. The fruit is a flat, bristly, segmented legume 6-8 cm long borne in clusters of 10-20 per head; hairs on the segments allow dispersal by water and on animals or clothing. Seeds remain viable in sandy soils for at least 23 years. The species favors floodplains, riverbanks, and seasonally wet ground.