Harpooned

Very sparse and lacy, hard to capture

I was weeding the sunny slope by my front steps when I felt a prickle. The prickle quickly turned into a myriad of little stabs. Every time I moved, more stabs. I realized that some new bunches of fairly ornamental grass that had sprung up spontaneously were festooning my pants and t-shirt. Ugh.

So the first thing I did, standing up in my bedroom to change my clothes, was to identify it. Blackseed needlegrass, Stipa avenaceum (Piptochaetium avenaceum), says iNaturalist, the coolest app around. Snap a pick and ask for an identification. It has been spot on when I’ve tried it locally. And “needlegrass” is exactly what it is. It’s native to much of the United States east of the Rockies.

I pulled about a 100 spears out of my clothes before tossing them in the laundry. I had to carefully pull each one out and then run my fingers around the inside of the fabric to see if any spearheads got left behind. Then I studied more about this odd pest. It has perfect little harpoons. It launches them, and they bury themselves in clothes (and presumably animal fur). They are really miraculous. Take a look at how well designed for the purpose they are.

This also gave me a chance to get out my specialized macro lens for an extreme closeup.

Look at the hooks behind the point!

I’ve been turning my mind to how to control this without getting stabbed by a thousand tiny cuts. I think hard surface tight weave clothes, as opposed to the soft cotton knits I wore yesterday, might be more resistant to the stabs.








And then this morning, I found some more spears on my sneakers. I was able to capture what the harpoon looks like when it’s buried in the target. What an admirably persistent and well adapted plant this is. Despite its capabilities, it is listed as disappearing in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.