Sept. 01, 2022
The prayer plant in my room stopped praying. Or maybe it never started.
I’ll admit, I am often guilty of anthropomorphizing– assigning human characteristics, practices, and emotions to non-human things. It causes my writing to be overly sentimental and juvenile, and at times even sappy and unbelievable.
However, in this case, the plant in my room actually is a prayer plant, and it does for lack of a better word, pray. During the day it stretches its limbs towards sky and sunlight, and at night folds them in like prayer hands.
Rather than prayer, what we are actually witnessing is the plant’s nastic movement– its reflexes to external stimuli that may or may not make sense to us outside observers.
While its movements are imperceptible moment-to-moment, if you watch a time lapse of a prayer plant over the course of several days sped up 100 times, it looks like a dragon rearing many heads. Very much alive.
I know my plant isn’t praying because I haven’t been sleeping through the night and twice per week my shift starts at 5:30am, which means my alarm goes off at 4:45am, which means I’ve been up at all hours and not once have I seen my prayer plant clasp hands and pray.
Of course this caused me great concern, not for my plant’s spiritual life, but for its physical wellbeing. I assumed that without this “prayer” part of its day, my plant wasn’t getting enough sleep.
Turns out, this assumption was further proof of my tendency to anthropomorphize, and a prayer plant’s “prayer” is not at all the plant equivalent to sleep.
In fact, we are unsure exactly as to why a prayer plant expends the extra energy it takes to hold its leaves and branches in a prayer position.
The current theory states that it is a way to protect against bacterial overgrowth, which can occur as a result of condensation due to high humidity and cool nights (morning dew).
Since the plant is native to Central and South America, it seems valid, likely even. This theory also explains that during the day, the leaves stretch out to absorb more light, since rainforest plant life must fight for the right to photosynthesize.
Multiple sources claim that a prayer plant stops praying as a result of trauma, shock, or an enormous change in its environment. I found this all too relevant to my own life, and reminded myself to stop relating to the plant; reminded myself that this is not a lesson in spirituality or being a human, but rather an attempt to ensure the general health of my non-human friend.
In a moment of creative genius, I brought the prayer plant into the bathroom with me while I showered.
Not into the actual shower– I set the plant in the sink and let it bask in the heat and humidity, thinking a steamy bathroom must be something like a rainforest.