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Nov. 24th, 2009 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ruOn Saturday I went into the woods with my advisor and one of my classmates, a freshly minted master's student who is getting started on his thesis project, and wanted some help. The project itself is kinda neat, and it was nice to be out in the field when it's NOT blazingly hot. However, this was also my first significant encounter with Smilax.
I'm quite convinced that Smilax is the rose's evil twin brother. It's a thin, green, whippy vine, with big, WICKED thorns. Profuse amounts of thorns. That will claw anything they can get their prickles on. And did I mention they are whippy? And also springy? So if you push one away it's gonna come right BACK in your face, clawing and biting like an irate cat.
The research area was COVERED in the stuff. I realized retrospectively that the reason I wore my Wellingtons that day was not because of standing water (it was bone dry), and not because of bug protection (the ticks should be mostly dead by now). It was for protection against the Smilax that would bite and claw at my legs whenever I stepped in a patch of it. I still managed to get scratched up a bit, even with protection. I think it's the closest thing we've got to a man-eating plant here, because it will GRAB YOUR ANKLES AND NOT LET GO. At one point while fighting to escape a swath of it without falling over an image flashed through my mind: The scene in the original Star Wars movie when Luke gets pulled under the water by the tentacle monster in the trash compactor.
You know, it would be awfully silly if my obituary said that I died fighting a patch of Smilax. Still. Vicious.
I'm quite convinced that Smilax is the rose's evil twin brother. It's a thin, green, whippy vine, with big, WICKED thorns. Profuse amounts of thorns. That will claw anything they can get their prickles on. And did I mention they are whippy? And also springy? So if you push one away it's gonna come right BACK in your face, clawing and biting like an irate cat.
The research area was COVERED in the stuff. I realized retrospectively that the reason I wore my Wellingtons that day was not because of standing water (it was bone dry), and not because of bug protection (the ticks should be mostly dead by now). It was for protection against the Smilax that would bite and claw at my legs whenever I stepped in a patch of it. I still managed to get scratched up a bit, even with protection. I think it's the closest thing we've got to a man-eating plant here, because it will GRAB YOUR ANKLES AND NOT LET GO. At one point while fighting to escape a swath of it without falling over an image flashed through my mind: The scene in the original Star Wars movie when Luke gets pulled under the water by the tentacle monster in the trash compactor.
You know, it would be awfully silly if my obituary said that I died fighting a patch of Smilax. Still. Vicious.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-24 04:05 pm (UTC)Best bet is a set of bypass loppers. Preferably long handled ones, that way you can cut, and drag them out of your way.
That, or napalm.