Desmodium 'The Dancing Plant'

This plant needs to be seen to be believed! Forget those tacky dancing flowers from the 1980s, now you can grow your own dancing windowsill plant. Desmodium is one of the few plants capable of rapid movement, and has enraptured plant hunters and naturalists for centuries. Charles Darwin, good friend of our company founder William Thompson, was enthralled by this Asian shrub, writing about it at length in his 1880 book ‘The Power of Movement in Plants’. Each large leaf moves to maximise exposure to sunlight, but to conserve its energy, a pair of smaller leaflets at the base of each leaf are constantly on the move in the search for sunlight. Cleverly, the information gathered by these leaflets is then used to move the larger leaves as required! Come dark of night the leaves droop to rest until sun up. Even more astoundingly, and still unexplained by science, the foliage will also respond to certain sounds, especially high-pitched notes. Try it for yourself, play your plants some different genres - we’d love to hear if they show a preference for rock, classical or pop! Height and Spread: 120cm (59")