The unprepared visitor in shorts and sans permethrin should be on guard while exploring the upland meadow at Truro’s Twine Field — a sign at the entrance warns of the ticks. The same heightened senses necessary to avoid the many blades and stems stretching into the trail — each could host a questing pest after all — might also lead to imagining other dangers lurking in the grass. Around one bend of the trail, for example, lies a dragon.
The horns, upon inspection, are really the seedpods of Asclepias amplexicaulis, the clasping milkweed. The plant is named for its leaves — they lack petioles and clasp around its one unbranched stem. And it produces just one summer bloom, a spherical inflorescence whose fertilized flowers somehow transform into dramatic seed-bearing follicles, like the ones pictured here. Soon these horns will fully mature and split open at the seams, sending hundreds of tufted progenies flying off to find their own places in the meadow to roost. —Joe Beuerlein
