Plants on or near trails

[Amy L. Litton]

The Turtle Rock Nature Center finds itself in the position of having to remove dove weed from our labyrinth, as two children have picked up hairs that irritated the skin.  It took me over 5 minutes of searching online to find any reference to this.  Reggie was aware of this, but I'd never had a problem and have never heard anyone in the field express any problems with this plant, or I never would have left it to grow in that area.

My question, then, is how many out there were aware of this, and why isn't this common knowledge since it poses a potential safety issue?

[Lori Whalen]

Quite a few native plants (like Dove Weed) would pose a safety issue on a trail (your labarinth would be considered a trail, yes?).  I wouldn't feel too bad about removing ANY plant from a trail - unless it was threatened or endangered.  I guess you could try to transplant it, or at least wait for it to go to seed then spread the seed far from any trail.