Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1901 — The Exasperating Tuitui. [ARTICLE]

The Exasperating Tuitui.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in his island home of Shmoa, as recorded In the “Vailima Letters,” spent many happy hours in clearing paths upon the mountains. One plant was obstinate in withstanding him, the sensitive plant or tuitui, which he calls the island's deadliest enemy, and says:

A fool brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalize over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken charge of the island, and men fight it with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel, clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. Tuitui is truly a strange, beast, and gives food for thought. I am nearly sure that, even at the instant he shrivels up his leaves, he strikes his prickles downward, so as to catch the uprooting finger. One thing that takes and holds me is to-see the strange variation in the propagation of alarm among these rooted beasts. At times, it spreads to a radius of five or six inches; at times, only one individual plant appears frightened at a time. We fried to see how long it took one to recover. It Is all abroad again before two minutes.

Yet it has one incomparable gift Rome had virtue and knowledge; Rome perished. The sensitive plant has indigestible seeds, so they say, and it will flourish forever.