Thorn bush

“ A thorn-bush—what matter the precise name? there are so many in those parts, all execrable—acknowledged receipt of his carcass with a crash, and for a few seconds he hung, like a sack on a nail, spitted cleanly by at least one thorn, far thornier than anything we know here, before the thing gave way, and he fell, still limply, this way and that, hesitatingly, as it were, as each point lovingly sought to retain him, to a fork near the bottom, where he stayed. ”

“ In Herefordshire, the burning of a Thorn-bush is supposed to act as a charm against smut or mildew in Wheat. When the crop is just springing out of the ground, the farmer’s servants rise before daybreak, and cut a branch of some particular Thorn; they then make a large fire in the field, in which they burn a portion of it, and hang up the remaining portion in the homestead.——Tradition affirms that, at Hemer, in Westphalia, a man was engaged in fencing his field on Good Friday, and had just poised a bunch of Thorns on his fork, when he was at once transported to the Moon. ”

“ The fact that the high, cold plateaus are always open grasslands free from thorn-bush, whilst the lower parts of the country are usually covered with scrubby bush and thorny thickets, has led many people to think that lions have poor manes in bush-covered countries because the thorns tear out the hair ”

“ In country where there are no trees to make poles with, like parts of South Africa, where there is only a lot of small thorn bush and long grass, you can make "scherms," or loose thorn bushes piled in a heap and made into a small horse-shoe, arched over, back to wind, and covered or roughly thatched with grass. ”

“ The Christ thorn—said to be the same as the one that pierced the brow of the Savior on Mount Calvary—grows abundantly in Natal. In some instances the bush is used for hedge fences, and when allowed to grow to a height of from two to four feet it makes a spiky obstruction, as the prongs are 46 an inch in length, grow numerous on the stock, little thicker than a knitting needle, and are almost as sharp as a sewing needle. ”

“ Here and there a tiny thorn bush, alone and hardly living; at other times, a scattered group of bushes that find existence possible and a little easier, since they are banded together, and each protecting the other from exposure to the onslaught of withering sand-storms. After crossing a gradual rise to a height of land about mid-journey [130] to-day, we began a slight descent toward Abellama (alt., 1,700 ft.) , where there is a deep well which is said to be as ancient as the old caravan roads across Africa, and which is the only place where water is to be found between Aderbissinat and Agades ”

“ By nature the thorn is sharp, and the tulasi fragrant. முள்ளுக்கு முனை சீவி விடுவார்களா? Who sharpens the point of a thorn? முள்ளுமேல் சீலை போட்டால் மெள்ள மெள்ள வாங்கவேண்டும். If a cloth be spread on a thorn bush, it must be taken off with great care. ”

“ It was the familiar type of African bush—dry, waterless, gravel and sand surface, grown with low wide-branching thorn-trees at fairly open intervals, filled in with a dense undergrowth of smaller shrubs, sisal, cactus, and grasses, until only narrow sand washes, or game paths, remain open, for short intervals, here and there. Through this one wends his way, zigzagging, dodging, stooping, and always on the look-out to move along the line of least resistance.
It is rough going, as rough as one will meet with in many travels. ”

“ He informed us that it was a plant very plentiful in the bush, known by the name of uncaria procumbens, from its manner of trailing along the ground; and also called the hook thorn, being armed, as I had noticed, with strong hooks. Besides those on the branches, when the seed vessels break, each of the sides is covered with hooked thorns, which possess such strength and sharpness, that their grasp is with difficulty avoided by the natives, while when the unfortunate European once is caught, all his efforts serve but to fasten him the tighter ”

“ This is generally a white-thorn, of about four or five feet high, and they carry it to the street or place of their residence, in the centre of which they dig a hole, and having planted the bush, they go round to every house and collect money. ”

“ The illustration No. 1, on page 247, represents a still closed seed-vessel, and, formidable as it looks, its powers are more than doubled when it is open and dry, each half being covered with thorns pointing in opposite directions. The thorns are as sharp as needles, and nearly as strong as if they were made of the same material.
The reader may easily imagine the horrors of a bush which is beset with such weapons. No one who wears clothes has a chance of escape from them. If only one hooked thorn catches but his coat-sleeve, he is a prisoner at once. ”

“ This, too, blooms before the foliage is developed, and hints of spring as surely as the robin’s song. A larger but no less handsome bush is the white flowering thorn (Cratægus crus-galli) , and there are wild spireas that should not be overlooked, and two white flowering shrubs that delight all who see them in bloom, the deer-berry (Vaccinium stamineum) , and the “false-teeth” (Leucothoe racemosa) . All these are spring flowers. And now a word about an August bloomer, the sweet pepper-bush (Clethra alnifolia) . This is easily grown and is a charming plant. ”

“ When, however, the torrent is exceedingly savage, and generally of a republican temper, the outbreaks are too frequent and too violent to admit of any cultivation of the tongue of land. A few straggling alder or thorn bushes, their roots buried in shingle, and their lower branches fouled with slime, alone relieve with ragged spots of green the broad waste of stones and dust. The utmost that can be done is to keep the furious stream from choosing a new channel in every one of its fits of passion, and remaining in it afterwards, thus extending its devastation in entirely unforeseen directions. ”

“ I have often heard my father complain to my mother that these vines and the sharp thorns on the thorn bushes, with the rotting logs under one’s feet, quite spoiled all the pleasure of walking in the jungle, and he would greatly prefer walking on the plains if it were not for the broiling hot sun and no trees to shade one. ”

“ Besides this there is scarcely one thornless tree or bush in ten, by which every attempt to penetrate the thick underwood is dangerous, indeed impossible. Several of the plants—the sittera tree for instance—have the thorns placed in pairs, and in such a manner that one thorn is turned forward, the other back. If any one come too near these boughs, it is certain that his clothes will carry away some inevitable traces, imperfectly to be remedied amidst these wilds. ”

“ High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the point [Pg 192] where it is deepest and where there is some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or against a wall—the effect, no doubt, of the winds. Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and leafless, furze boughs have been woven in and out, so as to form a shield against the breeze. ”

“ Dry, shallow trenches full of weeds, and low narrow mounds, green also, divide it from the arable land; and on these now and then grow storm-stunted hawthorn bushes, gnarled and aged. On the banks the wild thyme grows in great bunches, emitting an exquisite fragrance—luxurious cushions these to rest upon beneath the shade of the hawthorn, listening to the gentle rustle of the wheat as the wind rushes over it. ”

“ I had nothing to say against the singing, since the shrike will often [Pg 12] twitter by the half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all attention instantly, and, after waiting till the sparrow had moved a little out of the thick of the branches, down he pounced. ”

“ In fact, their habits are quite unlike. The former feed chiefly on the leaves and twigs of thorns, such as the Acacia horrida, or “wait-a-bits,” while the latter live upon grass. The former are of fiercer disposition—will attack man or any other animal on sight; and even sometimes seem to grow angry with the bushes, charging upon them and breaking them to pieces! ”

“ That Natural Selection would tend to produce the most formidable thorns will be admitted by every one who has observed the distribution in South America and Africa (vide Livingstone) of thorn-bearing plants, for they always appear where the bushes grow isolated and are exposed to the attacks of mammals. Even in England it has been noticed that all spine-bearing and sting-bearing plants are palatable to quadrupeds, when the thorns are crushed. ”

“ The seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavour it has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs. The thorn, like other organisms, has its own unconscious intelligence and cunning, by means of which it endeavours to save itself and fulfil its life. ”

“ Thorns are developed in the most diverse ways. In many of the bushes on the coast of the Mediterranean true leaves are wanting altogether, the green branches and twigs being themselves the assimilating parts, and these are so stiff and rigid, so like some kind of thorn, that they suffice to scare off any greedy herbivore. ”

“ Attractive as it is when robed in the bloom and leafage of summer, the thorn develops a new beauty in its gnarled and naked branches and the hoariness of its gray antiquity. Loveliest, too, are the birch and hemlock in midwinter; whilst the swamp, ablaze with the scarlet fruit of the Prinos and smooth winterberry, presents its most 92vivid life above the snow. From it, likewise, I catch the gleam of the golden willow, with purple rufous lights that smolder amid the twigs and branchlets of the shrubs which seek its cool and solitude. ”

“ By far the greater number of bushes in the undergrowth are thickly covered with thorns, while the mimosas towering above them are armed with long, hard, sharp spines, and even the grasses have burr-like seed-capsules covered with fine prickles, or ears set with sharp hooks, so that every attempt to penetrate the forest from the path is foiled by a thousand obstacles. The bird the huntsman’s gun has brought down is lost to him because in falling it is caught in a bush which he cannot reach without an amount of exertion quite out of proportion to the object ”

“ Many plants and shrubs are armed with thorns, as the buckthorn, sloe, carduus, cotton-thistle, &c: these serve to keep off animals, which otherwise would destroy their fruit. At the same time, they cover many other plants, especially of the annual kind, under their branches. Nay it has frequently been observed on commons where furze grows, that wherever a bush was left untouched for some years by the inhabitants a tree has sprung up, being secured by the prickles of that shrub from the bite of cattle. ”

“ For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? ”

“ Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against such foes. ”

“ A remarkable peculiarity in the forests of this country is the absence of thorns: there are but two exceptions; one a tree bearing a species of 'nux vomica', and a small shrub very like the plant of the sarsaparilla, bearing, in addition to its hooked thorns, bunches of yellow berries. The thornlessness of the vegetation is especially noticeable to those who have been in the south, where there is so great a variety of thorn-bearing plants and trees. We have thorns of every size and shape ”

“ Everything, even the smallest of the mimosa tree, is armed with long, strong, very sharp thorns. Each thorn is as sharp as a needle and about an inch long; indeed, the native women use them as a cobbler does his awl, and I have often seen a woman using the thorn to pierce a girba and shreds of the palm leaf to sew it up with. The thorns of the kittar bushes are quite semicircular in shape, very near to each other, not long but very strong, and each successive thorn crooks in a different direction to its predecessor—one crooks up and the other down. ”

“ They start to be leaves or branches but get nipped, in some way, so they turn into thorns. They are very useful to roses. They help the slender canes catch on supports, and they frighten away some enemies. Little boys and girls would be sure to pull too many sweet roses if it wasn't for the scratchy thorns. Can you think of any other plants that have thorns? Thistles? No thistles have spines and prickles. A true thorn has wood and bark. Blackberry and raspberry briars have thorns. So have crabapple and hawthorn trees. Those plants, too, have five-petaled, rose-like, fragrant blossoms. ”