{"id":1543,"date":"2010-11-13T09:31:24","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T14:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/?p=1543"},"modified":"2011-11-15T18:00:54","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T23:00:54","slug":"hitchhikers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/2010\/11\/hitchhikers\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitchhikers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take a walk in tall grasses this time of year and you’ll\u00a0 likely pick up all sorts of hitchhikers (yes, we called them \u201chitchhikers\u201d as kids)\u00a0 As a\u00a0 mom, I tend to find these indoors more than out: on socks, coveralls, the dryer lint screen, bath towels.<\/p>\n

The typical varieties around here are Agrimony and Tall Beggar’s Ticks.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Agrimony Seeds<\/p><\/div>\n

Agrimony’s aliases should clue us in:\u00a0 \u201cCockeburr,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSticklewort,\u201d \u201cPhilanthropos\u201d (maybe because it gives freely of its seeds?). It’s a lovely native plant\u2014with tall, showy spikes in the late summer. The seeds rely on passersby (human and\/or animal) to pick up and unknowingly deposit them elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Tall Beggar's Ticks<\/p><\/div>\n

Tall Beggar’s Ticks have unique prongs which grab at any soft material\u2014a shirt, dog hair, etc. Nathaniel, my son, upon seeing the collection on my pants promptly said, \u201cMom, pull those out gently because if the spikes break in the material, it’ll bother you for days!\u201d I agreed. Just one plant can yield hundreds of prickly-pronged seeds.<\/p>\n

In 1941, a Swiss engineer returned from a walk with his dog and found burdock seeds lodged in the animal’s fur. After careful microscopic scrutiny, he became fascinated by the \u201chook and loop construction\u201d that he saw. Do you know what he invented?<\/p>\n

Velcro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Take a walk in tall grasses this time of year and you’ll\u00a0 likely pick up all sorts of hitchhikers (yes, we called them \u201chitchhikers\u201d as kids)\u00a0 As a\u00a0 mom, I tend to find these indoors more than out: on socks, coveralls, the dryer lint screen, bath towels. The typical varieties around here are Agrimony and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[139,35,18,137,19,138,59,140],"class_list":["post-1543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-agrimony","tag-family","tag-farming","tag-fields","tag-hobbyfarm","tag-meadows","tag-pasture","tag-tall-beggars-ticks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homegrownonahobbyfarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}