ARE YOU A DISPERSER?

A hike in fuzzy clothes can make you uncomfortably aware of seeds.  Some notorious examples are sticktights (Desmodium species), cockleburs (Xanthium species), and pokey grass seeds (many species!).  I concur that these can be a pain in the ankle or at least a time suck as you pick them off your clothes.  But if you want to be “Mary Poppins” about it… there is a bright side to these sticky things.  The bright side, is that these seeds are designed to be transported on mammals in their fur.  As mammals travel, the seeds eventually fall off and get located in new locations.  This is great for the plants!  Warning though.  Not every plant deserves to be transported into a new area.  This is how many exotic invasive plants have been distributed.  So, a good ecologist would pick off their “hitchhiker seeds” at the sight of the attack rather than transport them elsewhere.  So, how do you avoid these in the first place?  Well, I have some field fashion advise for you.  AVOID FUZZY THINGS!  Make sure your outer layer of clothing isn’t a sweater, fleece or other fuzzy item.  I always warned students about this prior to field trips.  Usually at least one student ignored my fashion advise and paid the penalty.  The most notable example was a young woman who arrived at the field trip in full body pink fleece.  I crap you not.  At one point she got totally hung up in a patch of briars and had to be extracted.  I’d like to think this is the universes way of penalizing anyone who doesn’t listen to me…but that may be unreasonable.  Regardless, use your fashion choices to avoid being a disperser.