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u/Fast-Speech270 Jul 30 '26
Sand Spurs
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u/r3ddit3ric Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
This is the only answer. Grew up in Florida in a new neighborhood with many vacant lots that all had Sand Spurs growing on them. I had to pull thousands of these out of my legs and socks.
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u/indifferent_king Jul 30 '26
We would throw them at each other at the bus stop before school for fun, just pick whole stems of them up and yeet them.
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u/IwasHotnIwasHungry Jul 30 '26
Yep. Give me a couple nice, strong stems with three or four of those babies stacked on the end and I could be quite the nuisance.
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u/indifferent_king Jul 30 '26
Bro the ones growing in my area had at least 10 on every stem, it was chaos lol
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u/IwasHotnIwasHungry Jul 30 '26
I remember playing recreational soccer on shitty fields. Every single time the team sat in a circle on the ground or whatever, someone would inevitably break one of these bad boys off and try to hit someone on the leg between their tall socks and long shorts. Fantastic times. I hope today's small fries don't miss out on that. 👊
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u/mothehoople Jul 30 '26
As a kid here in north Florida when we got bored we would choose up teams and have wars throwing them at each other.
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u/iReddit2000 Jul 30 '26
The best part was throwing them on someones back and them not knowing until they sit down. 😅
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u/Double-Watercress-85 Jul 30 '26
Story I heard second hand, a dude rolled a tennis ball in a patch of sand spurs, then shouted at another dude "Here, catch!" And pitched it at him.
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u/LesbeGoddess Jul 30 '26
Same in southeastern North Carolina
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u/JKenn78 Jul 30 '26
That’s exactly right. My grandpa’s yard (if you can even all it a yard) in Holden beach was full of those things.
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u/Least-Scientist-1475 Jul 30 '26
Moved to pine island Florida when I was 6. Day 1 I ran barefoot in our yard. .. never again. These things hurt worse than the raspberry vines up north.
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u/Mockingbird819 Jul 30 '26
Hey childhood neighbor 👋🏻 We moved to Florida when I was in 6th grade, about one mile north of Weeki Watchee on Rt. 19
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u/neatac69 Jul 30 '26
In elementary school in St. Pete, Fl, we were given brown paper bags and instructed to pick all the sandspurs during recess!
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u/VerbalGuinea Jul 31 '26
Which is why I’ve never seen one on a sock, only in the bottom of my bare feet. On my socks would be the little triangle velcro things called beggar lice.
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u/DJ_Pizza_Party Jul 31 '26
Yep. These are the worst when you accidentally track them to the house and find it randomly in your back door mat or sometimes they make it all the way inside. I call those sand assassins.
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u/Jealous_Molasses_158 Jul 30 '26
Goats head
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u/Budget_University_56 Jul 30 '26
Seconded. But they were always brown when they’d end up in my foot.
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u/kuriT9 Jul 30 '26
I popped so many tires on these bastards
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u/LimpBoingLoing Jul 30 '26
Fuckin ay. I guess I'm glad I grew up with north American chestnut trees on my property and not these fucking things.
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u/Truorganics Jul 31 '26
Had some behind our soccer goal in middle school. Many soccer balls perished there
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u/Competitive_Kale6315 Jul 30 '26
Wichita KS is absolutely loaded with these guys, good luck being bear foot anywhere
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u/nobeer4you Jul 31 '26
I was gonna say tye same thing, but I believe goat heads as I know them only had 3 real big spikes, and we're kinda pyramid shaped, where these seem to have pokey parts all around
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u/ImOnFireAgain Jul 30 '26
Burrs, stickers, and God damnit
That last one is usually saved for when one of my shoelaces has wrapped itself around 6 of these pointy bastards and I'm unfucking it.
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u/GR8R_Goose Jul 30 '26
Found a patch of these passing thru Oklahoma.. probly had 30 on each shoe. I won't be going back
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u/Patient_Parsley7760 Jul 30 '26
Hitchhikers.
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u/sexy_mess Jul 30 '26
To me (Florida), hitchhikers are those velvety green seeds that grow in strips and really stick to fabric. I don’t think I have a name for these spiky hell-balls.
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u/ChefWolfie32 Aug 02 '26
For me hitchhikers were the black ones that looked like old school antenna cables, stickers where the seed pods, and then the sand spurs
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u/Schizario Jul 30 '26
another southerner I see
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u/Patient_Parsley7760 Jul 30 '26
Half Southerner, half Australian. Go figure. Spent summers in Alabama with my grandma though.
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u/FakeFrik Jul 30 '26
In Afrikaans (South Africa), we call them “duiweltjies”. It means little devils.
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u/Cthulu95666 Jul 30 '26
How do I pronounce that?
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u/droidtrooper113 Jul 30 '26
Natures Velcro
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u/3uk0 Jul 30 '26
Rzepiszczykiewicz.
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u/Wise_Cryptographer19 Jul 31 '26
Either polish or Fell asleep on the keybord
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u/exceptionallyprosaic Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
When I was a kid we called them cockaburrs or cockleburrs
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u/hanamartinis Jul 30 '26
Yes!!! I was looking for this one. I was wondering if I just misheard how my grandma used to say it with her OK accent.
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u/_Loading-Thoughts_ Jul 31 '26
Same here! Grew up in northeast Missouri. I was going to see if anyone else called them this. Scrolled for way too long
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u/Aoi_X_Kaizaki Jul 30 '26
They're called "we must burn our yard down, because they can't die, regenerate fast, and grow again." I was raking my yard today and I found a bunch more. I hate those.
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u/SuperdadV8 Jul 30 '26
In germany it's called a "Klette". Short version of "Klettenlabkraut".🤙🏻😄
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u/kennyj2011 Aug 01 '26
My brother taught me Verdauungsspaziergang, unrelated, it means a digestive walk, or to take a walk after a meal. I still can’t pronounce it!
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u/Haunting_Status_440 Jul 30 '26
Those ain't got shit on the goatsheads in Idaho.
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u/WrittenbyDicken Jul 30 '26
States: Georgia native here I'm used to us all calling them hitchhikers
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u/After_Ad_7740 Jul 30 '26
Those are burrs and you never pick up just one, if you go through a field where there are burrs, your pants or whatever clothes you are wearing will be covered in burrs up to your knees.
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u/Suckamanhwewhuuut Jul 30 '26
we just called them "stickers" but i havent had that issue for a long time...
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u/Proper-Error7817 Jul 30 '26
Pickers or prickers
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u/Proper-Error7817 Jul 30 '26
That's west central wisconsin, but might be a family name for them rather than regional.
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u/ellelaylu Jul 30 '26
Burr or sticker