Barbs, Burrs. and Stickers

The grasses are growing taller and in some places starting to overtake the wildflowers. My family thought I was crazy for wanting to photograph them, but they have always fascinated me. The various modes of transportation these opportunistic plants use to travel and reproduce themselves are varied and clever.

As they grow larger and dry out, the Foxtails develop almost invisible barbs that grow in the opposite direction of the pointed end, so that they get caught and don't fall out. They can burrow down into a dog's ear or paw in a trice, and a trip to the vet is required to remove them.

The bright yellow flowers on the Burr Clover turn into little round balls resembling a tiny mace which get stuck in socks and fur. It is difficult to avoid them, and once they are inside your shoe, it is impossible to ignore them. By the end of the summer the green plant will have dried up and blown away, but the ground will be littered with the burrs.

When we were kids, we would take the long pointed seeds of the plant on the left, and poke one through the other to make "scissors", so we always called them Scissors Plants, but they are much more talented than that. As soon as they fall off the plant they begin to dry and rotate into a "corkscrew".  All the dried corkscrews in the picture came out of Rudy's fur. Being a Daschund with long hair, his belly is almost on the ground, and he leads with his whiskery nose as he plows through the tall stems, so he is a veritable magnet for them. Being a large black lab with smooth fur, Ozzie seems to do a better job of staying above the fray, but he will soon be a target for the foxtails.

The light colored Wild Oats are also light in weight--blowing like chaff on the slightest breeze. They have slender stems which dry and break quickly in the sun.  I can understand the phrase "sowing wild oats", knowing that in their carefree way, they will stick to anything passing, and go unnoticed until, hours later,  I am shaking them out of my hair and clothes.

As I look at the abundance of grasses and seeds, which were sewed at the end of last summer and are now springing up everywhere, I could digress into the subject of what constitutes a weed, but that must be a subject for another day. I would only venture to say that a weed is something that has traveled from a place where it is abundant, like the fields of gently waving grass, to a place where it is not wanted, like my dog, my socks or my garden....