animaux wrote:

Do a search for horse nettle.

This turned up pictures of a plant with large broad leaves. I need
something small and with sparse needle-like leaves, are you sure you
meant horse nettle?

Rebecca

Can you describe it again? I'm sorry, I don't think I saw the
original message.

The weed is pale green, small (6-8") and upright with needle-like leaves
about an inch long or less. It grows as a sparse clump of stems that
don't seem to branch much, with the needles radiating off the stems. The
things it throws when you touch it are tiny tight coils, maybe 2-4mm in
size (1/16 inches?) It throws them a couple feet up and out even if just
lightly touched.

I've seen this stuff a million times, I just never noticed its ability
to throw these spores before (I always thought bugs were jumping off it,
rather than the plant throwing something.) I have looked through a bunch
of weed databases and can't find a picture that looks much like it.
However I did find an old usenet posting from someone who seems to be
describing the same plant. Unfortunately nobody replied:

From: John Barrett )
Subject: Unidentified Weed - How to control
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Date: 1996/05/06
I was finally weeding all my landscaping yesterday and found this new
(at least to me) weed which seems to have taken over! It has "needles"
about 1/2 - 1 inch long and when you brush up against it, seems to
"explode" and shoot small, yellowish spores all over the place. Does
anyone know what it is and once I pull all of it (which causes more
spores to shoot out), will Preen or something similar prevent these
spores from growing?

I was glad to find this post. I was starting to think I imagined the
whole thing. ;-)
Rebecca
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