Meanest Weed I’ve Met
We don’t normally post on the weekend, but we thought you’d enjoy this quick mini-post.
Mean weed with lots of thorns
Our little digital camera isn’t the best on small detail up close, but you can sorta see the spikes this weed has nearly everywhere on it. It gave Stephanie quite the shock when she went to pull it like we do with all of our weeds. This is the only one we’ve seen like this and even the community garden leader didn’t recognize it. I hope this is the last of these!
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Colorado Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I love that you call it a "mean weed". Why does it have to be so mean? Maybe its father never gave it the support it needed in life. There is a mean vine in our yard that stuck to my pants and when I pulled it off, it flipped back and pierced my finger. It was not cool. Good luck keeping away from the mean weeds,
June 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
It looks similar to a plant in OK with the common name, "Bullnettle." It is truly evil. Not only does it have huge spikes like that, but if you prick yourself on one of the spikes, it releases some sort of toxin in you, which makes it super painful. There is an island on Lake Texoma that I call hell, because the only life on it is bullnettle, poison ivy, mosquitos, giant grasshoppers that jump at your face, and fire ants. Stupid weeds!
June 8th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinging_nettle. Wikepedia doesn't have the best pics of the plant, because it looks much meaner in real life.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
That link doesn't work because of the period. Try this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinging_nettle
June 8th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
We get weeds like this in Alabama….a lot. Its gotten to where I have to wear leather gloves when I'm pulling weeds. They really hurt!!!!
June 8th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
No such luck keeping away from these mean weeds, I found a second one in our garden on Sunday that surprised me with a nice poke!
June 8th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Thanks for the Link Angie, that's interesting that it not only has super thorns, but that they also releases a toxin so it pokes and then injects you with a poison. This thing should be called spider weed as it's climbing my list of things i don't like sneaking up on me. This weed just keeps getting better and better.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Ugh that sounds awful Daphne. We also have bindweed (http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/weeds/w802w…. which is hard to pull out the deep roots without it just breaking off. So you have to use your fingers and be careful to try to get it as deep as possible. I can't imagine doing that very effectively with gloves on. Hopefully a good year of diligent weeding should reduce the weeds in the future since they won't be able to go to seed and spread themselves.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Ugh that sounds awful Daphne. We also have bindweed (http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/weeds/w802w…. which is hard to pull out the deep roots without it just breaking off. So you have to use your fingers and be careful to try to get it as deep as possible. I can't imagine doing that very effectively with gloves on. Hopefully a good year of diligent weeding should reduce the weeds in the future since they won't be able to go to seed and spread themselves.
June 8th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I can't believe you can eat Stinging nettle or that anyone ever tried in the first place. Would you really want to eat something with thorns AND toxins?
June 8th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I only occasionally had bull nettle in my yard in Norman, but had tons of bull thistle which was not fun. The one you found in your garden seems way worse though since it's thorns were a surprise. While it was annoying to see thistle growing again I always knew what it was and not to pull it out without heavy gloves. It's those little innocent looking ones that are the worst since they always surprise you.
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