[greenbit]

Once you tangle with it, you can't help but study it, learn what it looks like in all seasons, what kinds of places it likes to grow. It seems to like the sunny edges of clearings, and hard rocky places other plants reject. So naturally it loves to crowd up against places humans tend to travel - beside trails and pathways, the edges of roads. Note the PI patch in summer with the oily leaves, watch it turn bright colors early in autumn, and memorize the look of the field of bare, upright knee-high sticks it leaves behind in the winter.

It's cruel irony that it doesn't bother wildlife, just humans.