Natures barbed wire!

 I bloody hate brambles, my garden has a "wall" of the bastards at the bottom of it.  Yes great it keeps out people cutting through, and since I trailed a few over the back gate the local prowler has given my garden a miss (he's probably having plastic surgery done somewhere to put his face back together) But I digress.
 As I was saying brambles!  I went out yesterday as it was almost dry for a change, to look for a location near my house, I'd spotted a place on the map that looked interesting. My God what a PITA to try and get to.
 For a start the ground was a bog, it's normally a little bit muddy in places, but bloody hell I've seen drier rice paddy's, I was wading through thick mud, then we get to the brambles. Oh dear God!  Talk about barbed wire, it was ridiculous, they were 4 foot high and thick a finger, I went as far as I could but without a machete it was hopeless.
 By then I looked like a hairy mud wrestler dripping blood. My right legs gone, ripped off below the knee by the bloody brambles, my left isn't so bad, I still have a bloody stump there so thats ok.  I hopped home and threw my clothes (what was left of them ) into my washing machine and started cleaning my wounds, and making a wooden leg.
 Lucky my legs grew back overnight (don't try this children, you might not be so lucky) but the right one is still sore.
 But the whole thing does raise a serious question.  What is it about brambles that make them so important in nature that they need that level of defence. Seriously I'd rather have taken my chances going over the top in Flanders, for a start it was probably less muddy and the coils of barbed wire had nothing on the bloody brambles I went through.
 So I've had a think and learnt a lesson from WW1, next time I go back I'm going to get some artillery to shell the barbed wire.... Errrr brambles I mean, lets face it a sustained barrage of say a month might actually destroy at least two brambles....