Rewilding My Lot

I first encountered Powderpuff aka Sunshine Mimosa (Mimosa strigillosa) when I lived in Houston. It’s a sturdy little ground cover with pretty pink flowers and I’ve had it on my list to add to the Seguin garden if ever I found it again.

I’ve never seen it for sale, perhaps because it’s too common and easily available (if you have a friend who can give you some or you know where to find it).

When I was visiting Houston recently I noticed that Powderpuff appeared as a “weed” in some of the lawns nearby, which reminded me that I’d like to have that plant myself. I wasn’t about to dig it out of strangers’ lawns, but I did find some in open land beside a creek nearby. See first photo and the one below (the darker leaves). Powderpuff leaves are sensitive, in that they close up when touched.

So one morning, armed with donated pots and borrowed tools, I set about harvesting some plants to take home. I knew that I shouldn’t take all of Powderpuff in that location, but there was plenty to spare.

This is a sturdy plant, and the roots run deep — digging it up was quite difficult. Some of the plants had seed pods that were beginning to form, but they were nowhere close to being mature. So probably my only chance to make the transplant successfully would be to have established roots keep their function in a new location, or for new roots to form at node points.

Unlike the Frogfruit situation, where I have an infinite supply of new plants on my own property, I may only have one chance to get this Powderpuff established. So it’s worth the extra effort of getting pieces to grow in pots before I put them in the ground.

Unfortunately, my schedule meant that there were two days between harvesting plants in Houston and settling them in Seguin.

When it was time to move the plants from their transport pots to different pots here, they didn’t look in great shape, but I’m hopeful that something will recover enough to transplant here. I had five plants with root pieces, and so they went in bigger pots. One plant had several long stems and so I cut those stems into pieces that each included a few nodes (where leaves grow from stems, and where I suspect roots could form), and mostly buried those pieces in 16 smaller pots.

So now I have a little Powderpuff hospital unit that will need regular watering and maybe in a few weeks I’ll know what is viable.