Devil's Club

This plant is all over the place in Pacific Northwest forests. The stems are covered in many, many very fine little thorns. I can tell you from experience that if you accidentally grab one of these to stop yourself sliding you will very much regret it (and need tweezers) later on. They do however catch the forest sunlight rather beautifully. These plants are fairly immature and still relatively small. They can get much larger, with way more wicked spines than these young plants.

Devil's club is related to Siberian ginseng and has been used medicinally by Alaskan and Pacific Northwest Native peoples.