There are 1 results of your search for three-corner jack.
three-corner jack
noun
a. a low-growing plant (Emex australis) having many hard, sharp, spiny seeds that are extremely painful to step on and which will sometimes even puncture through shoe soles.
b. one of these seeds. Compare bullhead, California puncture weed, caltrop, cat head1, cat's eye1, double-gee, goat's head.
Contributor's comments: Called double-gee in W.A. farming areas.
Contributor's comments: This is a weed with spiny seeds, Botanic name: Emex australis: "The children could not play in the reserve because it was full of three corner jacks."
Contributor's comments: We regularly impaled our bare feet or thongs on three cornered jacks on holiday at Barwon Heads (on west coast in Vic) in the 1960s. They had 3 very hard and sharp points.
Contributor's comments: [Adelaide informant] California weed? - three corner jack, please.
Contributor's comments: I grow up in Central SA and Adelaide, lived at Bordertown and Port Lincoln SA. As a Weed Scientist I have noted common names for plants. Three corner jack is used for Emex australis in SA (Doublegee in WA). Caltrop and bindii (bindee) are not used for Emex australis in SA or WA, but these are used for Tribulis spp esp T. terrestris (Caltrop) a different plant.
Contributor's comments: I grew up in Western Sydney knowing these as "Three Corners" I have since become aware that they are the same as catheads, and this is the word used where I live now. The Three Corner useage may have been a family peculiarity, as I have rarely if ever heard it outside the family. They prevented me from going barefoot as a child.
Contributor's comments: [Wimmera and Mallee informant] A hard prickle with three protruding spikes: "I trod on a three corner Jack."
Contributor's comments: We called them cat's heads growing up in western NSW and were constantly repairing punctures in our bike tyres thanks to them. Mostly referred to caltrop in the Southern Flinders where we live now.
Contributor's comments: I should add that, in my childhood, my first exposure to "three-corner jack" was whilst staying on a relative's farm near Virginia on the Adelaide Plains. They referred to the seeds as "jack sharps". I latyer foud out at school (in Adelaide) that they were usually called three-corner jacks. I was reminded of this when an older cousin used "jack-sharp" recently.
Contributor's comments: I knew these prickles only as three corner jacks in Broken Hill as a child, and have not heard of any of these other names.