this is my first year gardening and i absolutely love my plants like they are my children
i don’t wear gloves and i often forget that some of my plants hurt like hell when i touch them, like my cucumbers and my summer squash
why is it that they’re so prickly? especially my squash i feel like i can’t touch it anywhere except for the actual vegetable itself without getting poked whereas i don’t have that problem with other plant stems.
(sorry if it’s a dumb question i’m still learning about plants little by little!)
In: Biology
I’m pretty sure it’s because they want you to only touch the fruit. It’s (kind of) meant to be eaten, while other parts of the plant might be vital to it’s survival, so they don’t want anything to mess with them.
I dont know why they have prickly parts (including the fruit) but when you get tired of being poked, get gloves with a rubber coating, they work great to keep your hands free of harm.
If I were a slug I’d be much happier eating a smooth stem or climbing up a smooth stem to a mice tasty leaf. Spikey stems are not so appealing (so the plant has a better chance of surviving).
because for the most part anything that wants to touch those parts wants to eat them, and plants that get eaten don’t tend to get the chance to reproduce, so it evolved as a benifit.
Plants are living creatures too that over time have evolved to develop methods of defending themselves to stay alive longer. Some of these methods include spiky stems.
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