HOW PLANTS LIVE TOGETHER 49 



leaves. Sometimes it shuts up only a few, but if 

 the drought is severe the sensitive plant will shut 

 up all of them. It will shut up its leaflets, too, if 

 you touch or jar the plant. 



Now who would have thought that plants moved 

 their own leaves? Yet, if you watch mamma's plants 

 in the window you will see that they do. Turn 

 around a flowerpot that has been standing where 

 the sun has shone upon only one part of it and see 

 what will happen. 



Some leaves will turn their edges to the sun when 

 it is very hot to save themselves from being dried 

 up. These compass-plants, as they are called, point 

 their leaves north and south. They grow in the 

 desert, and many a traveler is glad enough to find 

 one when he has lost his way and the day is cloudy. 

 When the compass-plant happens to grow in a 

 shady place the leaves lie flat like those of other 

 plants. 



Then some leaves go to sleep! You have seen 

 flowers go to sleep and open again the next day. 

 The four-o'clock and the portulaca close their petals 

 when their day is over and wake up again on the 

 next. But did you ever see leaves go to sleep? 

 Watch the oxalis in the hanging basket close its 

 little three-lobed leaves when night comes on. 



Does it seem strange to you that plants should 

 have some motion of their own? And strange, too, 

 that seeds should sleep longer if they do not find the 

 conditions right for their growth? 



It does seem strange. Yet God does not give 

 His creations any law to follow which they have no 



