The wildflowers are blooming in the fields around our house there, but I was a bit dismayed in how many bull nettles have popped up.
Like wallflowers that no one wants to dance with, these wildflowers are the ones no one wants in their landscape. Why? Because everything about the plant except for the bloom is covered with stinging little spiny things.
If you ever touch or brush up against a bull nettle, you'll always remember to be careful around them in the future.
Why so many this year? Because we had feral hogs using our land as a playground back in the winter. Their hooves dig deep in soft earth and their snouts do even more damage.
Where the soil gets torn up, bull nettles follow.
My first inclination was to put on my jeans and boots and dig up as many as I could. However, the blossoms on top of the 2 foot tall stalks are pretty. Usually these over-sized blossoms droop rather than stand straight up.
I never knew much about this Texas wildflower so I decided to learn something about them before I decimated their number.
SURPRISE! WRONG NAME
I learned that the plants in my field were probably not Texas Bullnettle aka Cnidoscolus texanus, a spiny, deep-rooted, herbaceous perennial in the Spurge family. They're probably the White Prickly Poppy aka Argemone albiflora, a nettle-like spiny plant that also grows tall.
White Prickly Poppy has spiny prickles, but it's not the stinging hairs that cause severe irritation like those on the Texas Bull Nettle, renowned for its stinging hairs that can cause a painful rash and irritation upon contact. (I shudder to think about what a real bull nettle might feel like.)
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| Taken at Johnson City, TX |
Quail and dove eat the seeds of the prickly poppy, and native Americans used it for various ailments, but it has to be expertly used because it can be toxic.
The bull nettle seeds are edible when ripe and were eaten by native Americans. The root is supposedly edible, but I don't plan on digging a plant up and boiling it like a potato unless we descend into a post-apocolyptic era.
The plant has medicinal uses, and Native Americans have used it for various ailments, but it can be toxic if not used properly.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY
I became fond of these 2 native plants—yes, I have both varieties in the fields—and I decided to leave them alone. They look a little strange growing almost 2 feet above the other wildflowers, but I imagine them as sentries, looking out over the field of flowers, keeping watch for danger.
I'll love them from afar because I'm not getting within a foot of either of these plants. I learned my lesson long ago when I wanted to pick them for a bouquet. Outch! Ouch! Ouch!
They're so pretty, too!
ReplyDeleteI think so.
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