Named for Bartolomeo Maranta, an Italian physician and botanist of the sixteenth century, the Maranta genus includes a few dozen low-growing plants native to the American tropics. The plant gets its common name from the fact that its leaves stay flat during the day and then fold up like praying hands at night. The Maranta leuconeura species has some of the most strikingly beautiful, decorative leaves in the plant kingdom. The popular tricolor variety has deep green, velvety leaves with yellow splotches down the midrib and arching red veins traveling to the leaf margins.
Nyctinastic movement, less formally known as sleeping movements, are plant movements that occur in response to darkness. These movements are growth independent, and are a type of circadian rhythm that function on a 24 hour clock. Not much is known about why nyctinastic movement occurs, but it could possible be for protection of the plant.
The leaves are the site of the movement, moving from their resting angle during the daytime through an arc of 90° to a nearly vertical position (Hill 1960). The upward movement begins around 4 hours before the dark period and reaches their highest point after the light is off. The upward movement, however, is much slower than its downward counterpart. This movement of the leaves from a horizontal position during light hours to a vertical position during dark is what gives M. leuconeura its common name of the prayer plant, in reference to the common hand position during prayer.
Plants don’t have muscles and tendons to move the leaves around though, so how does this movement occur? The nyctinastic movement in leaves is all due to something called the pulvinus. The pulvinus is a motor organ at the base of leaves and leaflets. The cells that make up the pulvinus swell and shrink due to turgor pressure in accordance to the circadian clock and create the visible movement in the leaves.
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Time-Lapse Video was recorded using my iPhone 6s.
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