One of my favourite monsoon plants is starting to bloom. I'd seen the pods all over the place, but had no idea the flowers were so beautiful until a few years ago when I put two and two together, seeing the unripe pods still on the plant. The dried pods are designed so that they catch onto your ankle and onto animals' legs. That's one way they're dispersed. Another way is how they explode open. A public television (PBS) "Nature" show episode about seeds has a wonderful time-lapse of it exploding and dispersing the seeds. There is a Native American folktale about how the rattlesnake got its fangs from the Devil's Claw because it was getting stepped on by all the other animals and had no defense.
