I thought I knew all the plants that would attack me in southern Illinois…then I headed off trail to find a good spot for a cathole and started to push through a shoulder-high thicket of these guys:
This proved to be a mistake, due to the hitherto-unnoticed-by-me spiky thorns all over their stems. I found another spot, so now I’m just left with small punctures & curiosity.
I’ve seen a lot of thorny weeds but I don’t recognize this particular one. Looks kinda like honeysuckle but honeysuckle has no thorns
I was thinking maybe some kind of locust tree sapling but I think the leaf shape is wrong. I’m surprised no one has recognized it; it was all over the place. Then again if Beehaw is like most online communities most users are from the coasts rather than the midwest.
this seems like a prime use case for AI image recognition tools. There was some iphone app called leafsnap that does somthing like this… can you upload a picture and it finds likely candidates. Haven’t used it in years, this was pre-chatGPT era
Oh and yeah… could be black locust. Not sure why I didn’t tihnk of that, I have a billion of them in my yard
Pretty sure black locust leaves are rounded instead of pointy.
I wonder if they might be honeylocust saplings.
It’s not honey locust either. Those leaves are tiny and very distinctly feathery looking.
Could it be Aralia spinosa?
Right on the edge of the range (at least according to https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/tree/araspi/all.html) but you may well be right. Preference for moist soils fits the distribution I was seeing. I’ll believe this until proven otherwise. Thanks!
After looking at some pictures, I see why it’s sometimes referred to as “devil’s walking stick!”
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