[Paleo Conservative]

who died three days after scratching his legs on gorse during a training exercise in Devon.

Can someone translate that into American?

[GSlob]

gorse, n. yellow-flowered evergreen shrub with sharp thorns, growing on wasteland [also called furze or whin]

[Captain Rhino]

Gorse (Ulex) comprises a genus of about 20 species of evergreen shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae, native to western Europe and northwest Africa, with the majority of species in Iberia. Other common names for gorse include furse, whin and furze.

Gorse is closely related to the brooms, and like them, has green stems and very small leaves and adapts to dry growing conditions, but differs in its extreme spininess, with the leaves being modified into 1-4 cm long spines. All the species have yellow flowers, some with a very long flowering season.

A picture at the link shows the 1/2 to 2 inch long spines like the ones that scratched the Royal Marine. However, if the information in the article is accurate, the scratch just provided the entry point for the bacterium which was either already on his skin or, more likely, in the medical facilities where he was initially treated

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorse

[sodpoodle]

Gorse is a type of broom. A wild shrub found on moors.

Does that help?

[VOA]

Someone else explained "gorse".

And it's not unknown for someone to die of an infection acquired by
having their skin punctured/abraded by plant material.

I can't recall the name of the series, but PBS had a good series on
the advancements in public health that we take for granted (in the 1900s).

One notable case occurred when penicillin was just being produced during
WWII, it was tested on a British firefighter that got a gash
(IIRC) on his face that became infected.

There was enough purified penicillin to inject the firefighter,
but it was only sufficient to halt the infection for a short time
(couple of days?).
Unfortunately, there wasn't enough penicillin available to give a
second injection.
The firefighter proved penicillin worked in humans...but he died when
the infection rallied and killed him.
Sadly, if he'd been wounded a few years later...he'd almost surely
have gotten plenty of penicillin and lived.