Most excellent information from tsuwm, of troy, and Faladagio! I like the theory that John the Baptist may have been eating pods from trees. There's a pulse in that theory, and I've just made a silly pun. Also, of troy, it is very interesting to think of the thorny locust as being a prototype of sorts for barbed wire, apocryphal or not. And, Fald': what's this 'treyf' business? Am I out of the loop again?