Solved: Sensitive Mimosa

[Tom]

I just couldn't resist this. It was just too pretty.  About the size of a silver dollar (not one of these Susan B. Anthony ones either)

                 
           

[CHARLIE]

Looks to me like the flower of a thistle. But I don't think you have them down there and the leaves ain't right for thistle. So, I'll help someone else by saying. It ain't thistle. There, that eliminates one possibility.

[swampwhiteoak]

Looks like Mimosa to me.

[Tom]

oh, your hot.  I'de hate to give it to you for that but I may have to. try again.  Look how little this thing is.  See the grass in the background?

[Texas Ranger]

Sensitive mimosa, but I didn't think it went that far north.

[Tom]

Your right Don.  Its  mimosa called sensitive briar and is a member of the pea family.

I'm not sure that it doesn't get that far up north but it gets that far down south.  You see, I'm in Florida.  That's what is making this ID thing so much fun.  The Timber Forum has members from Ontario to Maine to Florida and British Columbia to Texas.  You never know what is going to show up on here next.  I enjoy exposing some of those up-the-country fellows to the array of varied plants we are lucky to have and now and again they put something here that completely baffles me.  I just have to sit back and wait for them to tell me what it is.  

This little flower was growing beside my driveway up by the hardroad.  The plant itself is everywhere. As kids we would spend hours touching the leaves and watching them close up.  I don't know why we don't see the flowers everywhere because there is no lack for the plants.  They seem to flower seldomly so that you find one only now and again kind of like finding a woods lilly.  That makes them special.  

Here is one link to describe Mimosa:
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=02D13000

[Texas Ranger]

Woods Lilly, guess we have a lot in common in the woods.  I get excited when I find subterranean orchids and Jack-in-the-Pulpit.  Both represent an undisturbed site here in Texas.  The sensitive briar/mimosa is fairly common here, loved to show it  to my girls when they were growing up, first  trip  talked to them about plants being able to move, met with skepticism, and then awe.

Neat days in the woods.

[Tom]

Don,
Aren't plants neat?  We have a grass or sedge that we as kids called "caterpillar grass".  It has a hairey spike on top that is about the size of a big caterpiallar. If you hold it in your fist and work your fist like milking a cow then it will crawl out of the top of your hand.  Kids used to be able to entertain themselves quite easily.

I had a rear tire replaced on my Backhoe yesterday and spent a few minutes rolling the old one up the driveway and back. It brought back a lot of memories.  The old, burst inner tube is out there still.  I'm going to cut it up into strips to make "bungee" cords to use around the mill.  If it had been in decent shape I would have tried to patch it for the neighborhood kids.  They make great trampolines and oh, what a boat in the creek.