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Prickles on a blackberry branch. In plant morphology, thorns, spines, and prickles, and in general spinose structures (sometimes called spinose teeth or spinose apical processes), are hard, rigid extensions or modifications of leaves, roots, stems, or buds with sharp, stiff ends, and generally serve the same function: physically defending plants against herbivory.
Some plants have physical defenses such as thorns, spines and prickles, but by far the most common type of protection is chemical. [ 1 ] Over millennia, through the process of natural selection , plants have evolved the means to produce a vast and complicated array of chemical compounds to deter herbivores.
A plant's leaves and stem may be covered with sharp prickles, spines, thorns or trichomes- hairs on the leaf often with barbs, sometimes containing irritants or poisons. Plant structural features such as spines, thorns and awns reduce feeding by large ungulate herbivores (e.g. kudu , impala , and goats ) by restricting the herbivores' feeding ...
Today, the genus has more than 1,000 species that appear throughout the world, with around 400 of those referred to as “spiny solanum” for their prickles, according to the University of Utah.
Prickles, thorns and spines are all modified plant tissues that have evolved to prevent or limit herbivory, these structures have evolved independently a number of times. [215] Stimulant toxins: plants which are only distantly related to each other, such as coffee and tea, produce caffeine to deter predators. [216]
The spines are the relatively large, radiating organs; the glochids are the fine prickles in the centres of the bunches. Glochids ( Opuntia microdasys monstrose ) Glochids or glochidia ( sg. : "glochidium") are hair-like spines or short prickles, generally barbed, found on the areoles of cacti in the sub-family Opuntioideae .
Prosecutors say that minutes before the death of Payne, one-fifth of the famed British boy band, hotel workers "called the 911 emergency line to ask for help for a guest who was under the ...
For example, the article says that spines are derived from leaves, but none of the four sources I listed at User:Peter coxhead/Work page#Spines vs. thorns restrict the term to leaf-derived structures. Also, the use of spinosus as an epithet is relevant; many plants with such names have what the article calls "thorns", e.g. Prunus spinosa.