NIGHT BIRDS AND MOON FLOWERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 215, 11 September 1929, Page 6

NIGHT BIRDS AND MOON FLOWERS.

Night shift workers and prowlers are not alone in preferring night to 'day, nor are the rest of us alone in stowing away for the dark hours. There are night birds and night flowers in the country lanes as well as on roadway. In our own country the little brown owl, or mopoke, in England the nightingale, and in America the owl and the whippoorwill are familiar prodigies; the rasping note of the nighthawk is sometimes heard even on roadway, and the wakeful suburbanite is often cheered by the midnight outburst of an equally restive sparrow or blackbird. Some plants tuck themselves in for the night as carefully as any human who insists upon creaseless sheets. The poppies close their petals like oyster sheels; the lupine rolls its whorls of leaves" like a folded umbrella. Most of the clovers compose their leaflets as in an attitude of prayer, the outside ones face to face, like the palms of a devotee, and the third bowed over these like a praying head. Nasturtiums have a strange midnight trick of turning up the edges of their umbrella leaves. Meanwhile there are blossoms which, far from sleeping, respond to the dark. The evening primrose hides the rosy touch within its yellow heart until the sun sets and the air cools; the morning glory, closed in the hot afternoon, really opens long before dawn. Our water lilies open in the day, but the Asiatic lily bares its face to the tropic moon. Some of the plants respond to change in light and dark, but most of them follow the course of the thermometer. This was true of the famous "praying palm" of Faridpore, in India, which seemed to bow in devotion every morning. An impious scientist proved that the palm nodded most deeply when the temperature was highest and raised its head in the cool of the day. Perhaps we humans would show more intelligence jf we, too, adjusted our actions to the thermometer, instead of keeping the same hours in hot Tea tier as in cold.