Ouch!
Buffalo Bur fruit
Solanum rostratum (Solanaceae) is native to the United States and northern and central Mexico. Common names include buffalobur nightshade, buffalo-bur, spiny nightshade, Colorado bur, Kansas thistle, bad woman, Mexican thistle, and Texas thistle.
It is an annual, self-compatible herb that forms a tumbleweed. Individual plants reach 1–1.5 m (3.3–4.9 ft) tall, and have abundant spines on the stems and leaves. It produces yellow flowers with pentagonal corollas 2–3.5 cm (0.79–1.38 in), which are pollinated by medium- to large-sized bees including bumblebees.
Solanum rostratum flowers exhibit heteranthery, i.e. they bear two sets of anthers of unequal size, possibly distinct colouration, and divergence in ecological function between pollination and feeding. This species represents one of the latter scientific interests of Charles Darwin, who just over a week prior to his death had ordered seeds from a colleague in America, so as to investigate their heteranthery, a topic he was interested in.
The fruit, a berry, is enclosed by a prickly calyx. The seeds are released when the berries dry and dehisce (split apart, see below) while still attached to the plant.
Solanum rostratum is the ancestral host plant of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, but this pest adopted the potato, Solanum tuberosum as a new (and more succulent) host, a fact first reported in eastern Nebraska in 1859. (Wikipedia)
Ouch!
Buffalo Bur fruit
Solanum rostratum (Solanaceae) is native to the United States and northern and central Mexico. Common names include buffalobur nightshade, buffalo-bur, spiny nightshade, Colorado bur, Kansas thistle, bad woman, Mexican thistle, and Texas thistle.
It is an annual, self-compatible herb that forms a tumbleweed. Individual plants reach 1–1.5 m (3.3–4.9 ft) tall, and have abundant spines on the stems and leaves. It produces yellow flowers with pentagonal corollas 2–3.5 cm (0.79–1.38 in), which are pollinated by medium- to large-sized bees including bumblebees.
Solanum rostratum flowers exhibit heteranthery, i.e. they bear two sets of anthers of unequal size, possibly distinct colouration, and divergence in ecological function between pollination and feeding. This species represents one of the latter scientific interests of Charles Darwin, who just over a week prior to his death had ordered seeds from a colleague in America, so as to investigate their heteranthery, a topic he was interested in.
The fruit, a berry, is enclosed by a prickly calyx. The seeds are released when the berries dry and dehisce (split apart, see below) while still attached to the plant.
Solanum rostratum is the ancestral host plant of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, but this pest adopted the potato, Solanum tuberosum as a new (and more succulent) host, a fact first reported in eastern Nebraska in 1859. (Wikipedia)