Those suckers get stuck in my shoes, socks and pants every time I go out walking in the warm months.

I did come across a small roadside weed that looks similar, but it has no stickers. They look like miniature palmetto shrubs. And when I say miniature, I mean, no more than 4 inches by 3 inches high.

Fortunately they're easy to pull out by the roots, provided you wear gloves.

and I do not miss the little bastards. In Texas I once jumped off the bow of a boat onto the shore to go up to the bait shop and landed both bare feet right in the middle of a field of them. It hurt so much I fell down and got more in me all over. I was paralyzed from the pain and my folks had to come pick me up and carry me off to be de-stuck.

I don't remember which lake it was so I may just never go to a Texas lake again. I want to say Possum Kingdom but we went to Texoma almost as much so it could have been either. Or Grapevine.

aka toritos, aka puncture vine

suckers hurt

Last edited Wed Jun 11, 2014, 11:14 AM - Edit history (1)

pink cotton candy.

Here are the seeds:


When I was a kid, we went barefoot all summer. As soon as school let out, we worked at toughening the soles of our feet. If we couldn't walk across hot asphalt or a field full of sand spurs, our feet weren't tough enough.

Up here in Tallahassee, sand spurs are not as common, or maybe we've just managed to eradicate them on the farm.

You may not know you brought them in, clinging to your pants, until you sit down and cross your legs and OUCH! And when you have to remove them from your dog's paw, you know it's going to hurt you when you pull it off.

So they didn't hang onto the clothes as much as if we wore long pants.

Here we have Spanish needles which have pretty white flowers with yellow middles. The bees, butterflies and other insects love the flowers so I always hate pulling the plants:


But their seeds are nasty and once they get on your clothes, they are a bear to get off. Hot water helps to release the seeds' grip, but the pointy little buggers will mix into all the clothes in the load and poke you later.

http://www.plantbook.org/plantdata/weeds/w_bidens_alba.html

Which should be renamed, fire stinging needles, because you feel a burning sensation afterward.

I hated those as a kid because they got the upper part of the foot and not the toughened sole.

Witch hazel is a good way to relieve the burning.

They grow along the golfcourse and never get as full as the picture, but one or two stems can get leggy. So you really have to watch were you step when you're wearing sandals.

I hate those more than almost any other plant. (I know them as sand burrs) I still go barefoot most of the time and I know where the patches of goatheads are and they do eventually get rounded off/pounded to nothing by the livestock (and even eaten), but sand burrs are just evil and they will do things like let you walk into the middle of a patch of them then surround you so you can't get back out. HATE!

When we first bought this farm, we had to establish grass - it had been corn fields and pig pens. One of the places we bought grass sprigs from had sand spurs and for years those pastures were covered with them.

I'm not sure what did it - the sand spurs lost out to the pasture grass, it is too cold at our location, or they don't like the heavy red clay that is our substrate - but gradually the sand spurs disappeared.

I remember those things very well. I always called them stickers. And that they did. They stuck to your feet, your shoes and your clothes.

There's a place we walk our dogs where it grows. Curse those who brought it to California.

Two of the dogs are pretty good at avoiding it, or dealing with the stickers themselves, but our not-so-bright dog will invariably walk into a patch of it and then just stop, requiring rescue.

There's a great picture on wikipedia:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulus_terrestris

(I'm curious about the cowhide on the floor.)

and place at strategic locations waiting for me barefoot in the dark.

I don't even think about barefootin' it here, everything in my yard is sharp and/or pointy.