The Beauties of Nature

Anne at Work let me know there is a plant called Giant Hogweed blooming in New York. Giant Hogweed looks like Queen Anne’s Lace that grew twice as tall as a human.

If you are exposed to the sap, you might be fine at first, but if the sap on your skin is exposed to sunlight it reacts by burning your flesh.

The two-foot-tall flesh-burning plant captured the imagination of my co-workers. The music aficionados found a Genesis song devoted to the Giant Hogweed.

(They also said, who’s that weird guy? That’s not Phil Collins.)

As you know, I am all about the lyrics. This song does not disappoint. (My favorite line? “They seem immune to all our herbicidal battering.”)

Turn and run!
Nothing can stop them,
Around every river and canal their power is growing.
Stamp them out!
We must destroy them,
They infiltrate each city with their thick dark warning odour.

They are invincible,
They seem immune to all our herbicidal battering.

Long ago in the Russian hills,
A Victorian explorer found the regal Hogweed by a marsh,
He captured it and brought it home.
Botanical creature stirs, seeking revenge.
Royal beast did not forget.
He came home to London,
And made a present of the Hogweed to the Royal Gardens at Kew.

Waste no time!
They are approaching.
Hurry now, we must protect ourselves and find some shelter
Strike by night!
They are defenceless.
They all need the sun to photosensitize their venom.

Still they’re invincible,
Still they’re immune to all our herbicidal battering.

Fashionable country gentlemen had some cultivated wild gardens,
In which they innocently planted the Giant Hogweed throughout the land.
Botanical creature stirs, seeking revenge.
Royal beast did not forget.
Soon they escaped, spreading their seed,
Preparing for an onslaught, threatening the human race.

(The Dance Of The Giant Hogweed)

Mighty Hogweed is avenged.
Human bodies soon will know our anger.
Kill them with your Hogweed hairs
HERACLEUM MANTEGAZZIANI

Giant Hogweed lives

=============================

So, I told Gary about the Giant Hogweed Infestation of 2011, and he had just read that it was a good thing we didn’t touch that dead armadillo in the road a few years back, because the armadillos that are coming up into Missouri from the South are …

LEPERS!

It seems only humans and armadillos can catch leprosy, and the healthy Southern armadillos have cast out the hordes of migrating leprotic armadillos. I checked to see if the Issue of Scientific American Gary quoted was perhaps dated April 1st, but no, here is the source. (April 27.)

They need an armadillo Jesus to come and heal them. Or send them off a cliff. I wonder if the scales make them immune to giant hogweed? One might kill the other.