Explore "The Sensitive Plant" by Frank R. Stockton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was never a better name for a plant than this, for the delicate leaves which grow on this slender stalk are almost as sensitive to the touch as if they were alive. If you place your hand on a growing plant, you will soon see all the leaves on the stem that you have touched fold themselves up as tightly as if they had been packed up carefully to be sent away by mail or express. In some of the common kinds of this plant, which grow about in our fields, it takes some time for the leaves to fold after they have been touched or handled; but if you watch them long enough -- five or ten minutes -- you will see that they never fail to close. They are not so sensitive as their cultivated kindred, but they still have the family disposition.
Now this is certainly a wonderful property for a plant to possess, but it is not half so strange as another trait of these same pretty green leaves. They will shut up when it is dark, and open when it is light.