You know how they look—so
Of course this little brown, flat object with horns is an akene. Inside it is a seed. The two horns at the top are able to fasten it quite tightly to a woolen dress or a sheep’s fleece. If you look carefully, you will see little hard teeth on the edge of the stick-tight that help it to cling. On one species of stick-tight these teeth point backward, like the barbs of a fishhook, and that kind sticks very tightly.
Stick-tight plant.
Stick-tight plants blossom in the summer time. The greenish-yellow flowers are clustered in heads like the dandelion flowers, and like those each stick-tight flower has an akene at the bottom. These akenes grow much larger than those of the dandelion, and they have the two horns on their heads.
The akenes stand on a flat cushion, just as the dandelion akenes do, but these do not wait for the wind to blow them away, though, if nothing comes along to pull them loose, they in time become very dry and fall out, and then the wind often carries the light little things some distance.
But their favorite method of traveling is by stagecoach, and if you happen along at the right time they will take you for their stagecoach, and let you carry them to a new place. Sometimes the plants grow so closely together that in passing through them one becomes quite covered with the little brown things, and it is a long and tiresome task to pick them out.
They, too, get on the tails and manes of horses, and the tails of cows, the coats of dogs, and the fleeces of sheep; but they are not nearly as troublesome to these creatures as are the burdocks.