Just waiting to get their hooks into you ...

Hooked fruits of six British wild flowers, that you might find attached to your trousers after a country walk in autumn. How many can you identify? Answers at the bottom.

A. Fruits about 2.5 cm. in diameter. Common on woodland edges and waste ground.

B. fruits about 5mm. long. In hedgerows and grassland, often on calcareous soils.

C. Fruits about 3mm. long. A woodland herb.

D. Fruits about 3mm. in diameter. A major agricultural weed, common in hedgerows.

E. Fruits about 8-10mm. A common weed of waste places, often found on woodland edges.

F. Fruits about 3mm. A woodland herb.


















Answers:
A. Burdock Actium lappa.
B. Agrimony Agromonia eupatoria
C. Enchanter's nightshade Circaea lutetiana
D. Gooosegrass aka cleavers aka sticky Jack Galium aparine
E. Herb bennet aka wood avens Geum urbanum
F. Sanicle Sanicula europaea

Nature's Velcro

If you go out for a country walk at this time of year there's a good chance that you'll return with some of these burdock seed heads stuck to your clothing. Those hooked burrs are difficult to remove when they hook into woven cloth ..... which is why they provided Swiss engineer George de Mestral with the inspiration for Velcro fastenings.


When I was a kid we used to chuck these at each other on the way home from school - and Shakespeare probably did too because he refers to their clinging qualities in several of his plays. The simple pleasures of a rural childhood transcend time. 


In Troilus and Cressida, act 3, scene 2.....
Pandarus.
They are Burs, I can tell you; they'll stick where they are thrown.


In As You Like It, act 1, scene 3.....
Celia.
They are but Burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths our very petticoats will catch them.
Rosalind.
I could shake them off my coat; these Burs are in my heart.