Midori-san, which lives on the counter of a Japanese café, writes regular updates with the help of sensors attached to its leaves. The detectors pick up electronic signals on the surface of the plant, which responds to light and human touch.
The data is then combined with weather and temperature information and translated into chatty blog posts using a computer algorithm.
"Today was a sunny day and I was able to sunbathe a lot... I had quite a bit of fun today," it wrote on October 16 from its cafe in Kamakura, near Tokyo. A more recent entry was less perky: "It was cloudy today. It was a cold day."
Satoshi Kuribayashi, part of the team at Keio University behind the project, said that the aim was to reveal something of the hidden internal world of plants. "We were initially interested in what plants are feeling and what they are reacting to where we can't see," he said.
Midori-san is a hoya kerrii, which are more commonly called "sweetheart plants" because of their heart-shaped leaves.
Website. Which seems to lose something with the translation.
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