Thorn (plant)

“ This is a spiny, rambling shrub, that may often be seen clambering over some cottage porch, or used as a fence or wall plant in many parts of England. It often grows nearly 20 feet long, and is then a plant of great beauty, with linear-spathulate leaves of the freshest green, and pretty little pink or reddish flowers. For quickly covering steep, dry banks and mounds where few other plants could exist this European Box Thorn is invaluable. Either species will grow in very poor, dry soil, and is readily propagated by means of cuttings. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thorium, thō′ri-um, n. a rare metal resembling aluminium, but taking fire below a red heat, and burning with great brilliancy.—Also Thorī′num.
Thorn, thorn, n. a sharp, woody spine on the stem of a plant: a spine: a plant having spines or thorns: anything prickly or troublesome.—ns. Thorn′-app′le, a plant of genus Datura: a haw, a thorn-tree; Thorn′back, a species of ray or skate which has nail-like crooked spines in its back ”

“ We have found that in dry and hot seasons the layers do not root freely, and that it is often necessary to allow the layers to remain for two years before separating them from the parent plant.
The Flowering Hawthorns are best and easiest propagated by budding them upon the common White Hawthorn. The buds take readily, unite firmly, and grow rapidly. We have not tried the experiment of budding or grafting these upon our common Wild Thorn ”

“ Then it turns to the left and is trained in garlands along a moulded oak beam that forms the base of a timbered wall with plastered panels.
But this is only one way of using this lovely climbing plant. Placed at the foot of any ragged tree—old worn-out Apple or branching Thorn—or a rough brake of Bramble and other wild bushes, it will soon fill or cover it with its graceful growth and bounteous bloom. It will rush up a tall Holly or clothe an old hedgerow where thorns have run up and become thin and gappy, or cover any unsightly sheds or any kind of outbuilding. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Finally the seedlings overtop the brambles, gain the mastery, shade the thorns to death, and develop valuable forests. The thorn trees shed their leaves annually. Their seeds are slow to germinate, some not sprouting until the second year. The fruit is worthless for human consumption, but some of it has a tart and not unpleasant taste. It is of many colors and sizes, depending on species. ”

“ The Thorns stand some singly, some in close companionship, impenetrable masses of short-twigged prickly growth, with here and there a wild Rose shooting straight up through the crowded branches. One thinks how lovely it will be in early June, when the pink Rose-wreaths are tossing out of the foamy sea of white Thorn blossom. The Hollies are towering masses of health and vigour. Some of the groups of Thorn and Holly are intermingled; all show beautiful arrangements of form and colour, such as are never seen in planted places. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Thorns are not characteristic of plants or natural to them. My opinion is that there is rarity present in a plant, and concoction will take place at the beginning of its existence, and moisture and cold rise upwards, and they are accompanied by a slight concoction; this circulates where there is rarity, and the sun causes it to solidify, and thus the thorns will be produced. Their form is pyramidal; for they begin by being thin at the point and gradually grow thicker, because when the air is withdrawn from the plant its parts increase, as the material of which it is composed expands. ”

“ It is a round-headed tree reaching forty feet in height, in moist soil. Its distinguishing feature is the black fruit, ripe in August and September, lustrous, thin-fleshed, sweet, one-half an inch long. The thorns are stout and sharp, rarely exceeding one inch in length. The leathery dark-green [Pg 159] leaves, one to four inches long, commend this black-fruited thorn of the West to the Eastern horticulturists. It has proved hardy in gardens to the Atlantic seaboard and in Nova Scotia. ”

“ Thirty or more varieties are distinguished in cultivation. It is worthy of note that, although the United States has more than 130 species of thorn trees of its own, with varieties so numerous that no one has yet named or counted all of them, a foreign thorn has been introduced and added to the number. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is interesting, too, to find thorns which are long enough to have little thorns branching from them. A straight thorn seems formidable enough even on a rose stem, but a thorn some ten inches long with eight thorns branching from it, each varying from half an [Pg 133] inch to two inches long, and this but one of a cluster of thorns, keeps the trunk of the honey locust sacred from climbing boys and from browsing cattle. The honey locust is more effective than a barbed wire for fencing. The fruit is in the form of a flat, crooked reddish brown pod from seven to eighteen inches long. ”

“ White-thorn, or May, which grows in hedges, woods, and old parks. This is a very valuable shrub, and, on account of the stiffness of its branches, the sharpness of its thorns, and its hardiness in enduring the severest winters without injury, it is universally preferred for making fences and hedges. The berries during winter afford food to various birds, but may be more usefully employed in fattening hogs: the wood is very tough, and, like the white-beam hawthorn, converted into axle-trees and handles for tools. ”

“ To a lesser or greater extent, the various species and varieties of Thorn are of great value for the wealth and beauty of flowers they produce, but the above are, perhaps, the most desirable in that particular respect. They are all of free growth, and, except in waterlogged soils, thrive well and flower freely. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The curious suggestion of the thorn is produced not only by the outline, but by the curious fact that the hopper never sits across the twig, but always in the direction of its length; and, what is more, the projecting point of the thorax is always directed towards the end of the branch, or direction of growth. It is no easy thing even for the casual botanist to determine this nice point in a given segment of a bittersweet branch placed in his hand, the position of the chance leaf or leaf scar being his only guide. ”

“ The Acacia tomentosa is of the same genus, with thorns so large as to be called the "jungle-nail" by Europeans. It is frequent in the woods of Jaffna and Manaar, where it bears the Tamil name of Aani mulla, or "elephant thorn." In some of these thorny plants, as in the Phoberos Goertneri, Thun., [1] the spines grow not singly, but in branching clusters, each point presenting a spike as sharp as a lancet; and where these formidable shrubs abound they render the forest absolutely impassable, even to the elephant and to animals of great size and force. ”

“ The differences between such a prickle and a thorn like that of the hawthorn should be carefully noticed. A thorn is really a little twig which has remained short and become pointed at the end. It has a core of wood which is continuous with the wood of the branch bearing it. That a thorn is really a little branch is shown by its origin in the axil of a leaf, and by its often giving rise to leaves and buds. ”

“ Never more than a few plants are found. Its forked stem is from eighteen inches to three feet high; the petiolate leaves are widely serrated; the large blossoms are a pure white; the fruit resembles the horse chestnut, and contains numerous black seeds. The thorn apple has a very repulsive odor, a disagreeable flavor, and is poisonous in all parts. ”

“ The green stalks that grow among thorns are neither withered in spring, nor stunted in their summer’s growth; they may be found in harvest taller than their fruitful neighbours; but the ear is never filled, never ripened, and the reaper gets nothing in his arms but long slender straw adorned at the top with graceful clusters of empty chaff. The roots of the thorns drank up the sap of the ground, while their branches veiled off the sunlight, and thus the good seed, starved beneath and overshadowed above, although it started fair in spring, produced nothing in the autumn. ”

“ Each pine needle twinkles with a gem giving forth rainbow-hued rays beneath the first steel-cold beams of the sun. The thorn-apple, whose wine-red branches are furred with a white beard, is etherealized into delicate pastel shades of lavender and mauve by a film of hoar frost. Ragged streamers of fantastic mist-shapes rise and float heavily through the moist air, obscuring, then revealing stretches of stream-laced woods and finally rolling away in lessening vapour307 into the lingering dusk of ravines. There is a mighty scene-shifting of Nature in progress. ”

“ These thorns are twigs, but they rarely bear leaves. Each is sharpened to a needle point, and highly polished. Sometimes it is single, oftener with a main thorn and two side branches; sometimes short, but often reaching over a foot in length, and growing stronger and more wicked-looking with age. Sometimes a honey locust has a crowded group of these thorns growing out of the trunk and large limbs. Once in a great while a honey locust is thornless, growing wild. From such trees a thornless variety has been developed. It is, therefore, possible to obtain from nurserymen trees of this variety. ”