The Urban Pantheist

Photos by cottonmanifesto. Location: Parkway road, Brookline.

Urban species #268: Beggarticks Bidens frondosa

If you're anything like me, you've been aware of this plant's seeds for years, but you may still not be familiar with the plant itself. After cutting through a field of tall grass, or through the bushes at the edge of a parking lot, you find that you have picked up a collection of two-pronged hitchhikers, stuck to your jacket, your pant-cuffs, and especially your socks. For many years I had no idea where these seeds, which my mother called stick-tights, came from. Recently I discovered a tall weed with pointed, toothed leaves, and a flower head that looked like a daisy with green petals instead of white. These "petals," anatomically speaking, are really bracts, and the yellow to orange center disc is a composite of many tiny flowers. When the plant matures, the center disc becomes brown and dry and prickly, and when something brushes against it, stick-tights are released. It was a "eureka" moment, when I pulled a flower apart and at last found the origin of stick-tights.

The group of plants that produce this type of fruit is collectively known as "beggarticks." Bidens frondosa, native to North America and successfully weedy, happens to have the colorful name "devil's beggarticks." The shape of the fruit is similar to a device used to help take snug boots off, giving the plant another common name, "devil's bootjack." Why this plant and its sticky seeds are considered so satanic when burdock seeds stick so much more tightly and itch so much more is hard to say. Beggarticks is a weed of roadsides, path edges, garden borders, and waterway banks--all places where a chance brush-by is likely to help spread the seeds. When it grows near water the seeds ("achenes," in botanical jargon) are eaten by ducks, and the green plant is eaten by muskrats.



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