Have you ever asked yourself this:

How did plants develop their spiky weapons?

In little research that I made, I found out that thorns, prickles and spines are different things and developed on different ways. And people often make mistakes because, in speech, in poems and in some books, people would say that roses have thorns, but the true is that roses have PRICKLES.

All plants developed these weapon to defend themselves from different kinds of herbivores.

First that we can say for sure that cacti have spines.

Spines are modified leaves or parts of leaves. Cacti contain water and they have to defend themselves from the wild animals in deserts. If there wasn't any spines on the, we wouldn't have any cacti today. Thorns and spines contain vascular tissues (tissues form with more than one cell) and prickles don't.

Down on the photo you can see Blessed milk thistle or Silybum marianum.

That little plant has a large number of uses in folk medicine and cosmetics. I guess, all valuable things in nature are well protected. It is covered by spines on like on this macro shot:

Thorns are modified branches.

They come out from the main stem just like new branches. This plant, down on the photo is crown of thorns and I wrote sbout it few days ago, check here.

Many people takes prickles for thorns.

But they are different. Prickles don't contain vascular tissues and they are not any kind of underdeveloped leaves or branches. They are extension of cortex or epidermis. Prickles on roses may look like thorns, but their content and development is different. Here you can see prickles on a blackberry branch:

And a macro shot:

There are other similar weapons that plants use to defend themselves.

There are many types of spiky hair and trichomes or needle - shaped leaves. On the last photo, you'll see a macro shot of needles from my favorite Prickly Juniper.

#whysoserious