Wild Flowers from the West

The Lantana is a plant from the Americas, which has become so naturalized in the tropics that it has replaced many native plants. You can see the lantana growing wildly in the fields, woods and jungles. Birds love its black fruit and butterflies love its flowers. The ground beneath a lantana bush is very fertile because of the leaves it sheds. Tribals in northern Karnataka make lovely baskets and garden furniture from lantana canes.

The Sensitive Plant Mimosa pudica is another plant from South America which has become naturalized here. It is not prized by gardeners .In Percy Bysshe Shelley's immortal words,

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower,

Radiance and odour are not its dower.