| PRICKLE | Thorn or spike on a plant |
| SPINE | Thorny spike on a plant's stem, or backbone (5) |
| THORN | Woody spike on a plant (5) |
| NODE | A swelling or "knot" in the state of a point of zero amplitude in a standing wave; a vertex or place of intersection; a lymph gland; a leaf's growth zone on a plant stem; or, an orbital point (4) |
| COCKSPUR | Word for a spike on a leg of a fighting male game fowl; a catch on a casement window; barnyard millet or orchard-grass; or, an American hawthorn armed with long spines (8) |
| TANG | Word for a serpent's tongue or an insect's sting originally, later a barb, point, prong or spike; or, bite, punch or smack, as in flavour (4) |
| PRONG | A tine or spike to which a branch of a river, part of a trifurcate attack/plan, point of an antler and spur of a mountain are likened (5) |
| ACANTHA | A thorn or prickle or spiny growth |
| PITON | A peg or spike driven into a rock to support a climber or rope (5) |
| SPINDLE | A pin or spike by which thread is twisted and whose name is the etymological root of "fuselage"; or, something thusly slender, such as a baluster, chair leg or watch fusee (7) |
| PRICKLES | Cacti, gorse, rose stems, thistles or urchins' barbs, needles, quills, thorns or tines; or, groups of tiggywinkles (aka hedgehogs) or arrays of porcupines (8) |
| ACACIA | Sweet thorn or camel thorn, e.g. |
| TUBERCLE | Small rounded nodule or elevation, especially on the skin, on a bone, or on a plant |
| STARFISH | Known collectively as a galaxy, an echinodermatous marine asteroid, such as a blue linckia, crown of thorns or the "chocolate chip" example (8) |
| SNUBBER | One who figuratively sends another to Coventry; a type of shock absorber; or, a device for suppressing voltage transients or spikes (7) |
| FANG | Point or spike of a tool (4) |
| SPINES | Old thorns or prickles of the rose, today's backbones of vertebrae or bound edges of books of prose (6) |
| SPINY | Covered in thorns or quills (5) |
| XYLOMAS | Hard growths or tumours on a plant or tree. (7) |
| ENDPIN | Spike on a cello or double bass |
