Our horses subsist on geraniums. Or at least a close relative, locally known as filaree. It’s also known as storksbill or heron’s bill. The botanical name is Erodium. They produce spiral/helical stickers in abundance in the springtime. When these stickers lodge in your socks, they’re referred to less in Latin terms and more in the Anglo-Saxon, if you catch my drift. After the first few autumn rains, those nasty seeds sprout (good riddance!) and we get plants with the leaves that horses love to eat.
A curious thing happens when the cold days of winter arrive; some of the leaves turn from deep green to bright red. Another curious thing happens; the filaree that grows under trees, as shown in the picture above, stays bright green. The trees are keeping the ground under them warm enough to stop the reddening that occurs when the leaves are unprotected.
It doesn’t seem that the shade of a tree almost barren of leaves could make that much difference in ground temperature, but the pictures shown here should prove that it does. Green or red, the horses chomp away, so we’re not worried. Now if only they would eat those nasty stickers! But they’d starve, so…
…never mind. Besides, horses don’t wear socks, so they couldn’t care less.
