The Goathead (Tribulus_terrestris)

Here is the ultimate goathead (or tackweed) blog post. From Wikipedia and featuring local photography, we have the goathead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulus_terrestris

Wikipedia Entry: Goathead

Tribulus terrestris is a flowering plant in the family Zygophyllaceae, native to warm temperate and tropical regions of the Old World in southern Europe, southern Asia, throughout Africa, and in northern Australia. It can thrive even in desert climates and poor soil.

Here is a photo of the plant showing the characteristic leaf pattern and small yellow flower.

Like many weedy species, this plant has many common names. Puncture Vine, Caltrop, Yellow Vine, and Goathead are the most widely used; others include automobile-weed, bindy eye, bindii, bullhead, burnut, burra gokhroo, calthrops, cat's head, common dubbeltjie, devil's thorn, devil's weed, doublegee, dubbeltje, gokshura, ground bur-nut, isiHoho, land caltrop, Maltese cross, Mexican sandbur, puncture weed, rose, small caltrops, sticker, tackweed, and Texas sandbur (also T. micrococcus).

It is a taprooted herbaceous perennial plant that grows as a summer annual in colder climates. The stems radiate from the crown to a diameter of about 10 cm to over 1 m, often branching. They are usually prostrate, forming flat patches, though they may grow more upwards in shade or among taller plants. The leaves are pinnately compound with leaflets less than a quarter-inch long. The flowers are 4–10 mm wide, with five lemon-yellow petals (see above).


A week after each flower blooms, it is followed by a fruit that easily falls apart into four or five single-seeded nutlets. The nutlets or "seeds" are hard and bear two to three sharp spines, 10 mm long and 4–6 mm broad point-to-point. These nutlets strikingly resemble goats' or bulls' heads; the "horns" are sharp enough to puncture bicycle tires and to cause painful injury to bare feet.

Locally, the plants grow in vacant lots, along roadways, and on sidewalks. Here is a plant just down the street from our home in Kennewick, WA.

See how it grows in the crack between the asphalt of the parking lot and the sidewalk. It has a taproot, which means it has a long, single root that reaches way down into the ground and does not need a lot of room. It lies very flat to the ground and branches out with long runners.




The fruit or nutlets are quite fierce on these plants. Large and scary. The pictures here are of thorns that are still "green" and not hard enough to do any damage yet. But, they will dry out and then they will be able to stick into shoes, tires, etc.















Goathead Industry

Kennewick is known for Red Wine and Goatheads and both are quite important to the local economy. Goatheads are exported to various foreign governments for use as anti-personnel weapons. Long thought to have been native plants, they are actually invasive plants genetically engineered by the US Dept. of Homeland Security as our first line of defense against Canadian cyclists. We understand that one of the purposes of the Sea to Sea tour was to test out this system; fortunately it demonstrated that it does not work. In the fall goatheads are harvested laboriously by hand and turned into edible breakfast cereal. The sharp thorns are removed and the goathead "heart" is roasted and sold as Grapenuts Cereal.

Rep. Hastings needs to go

A recent letter to the editor hit the nail on the head. Rep. Hastings has to go! I refuse to use 'Doc' since that connotes wisdom, which he sadly lacks. For several reasons he needs to retire. One, he ran under self-expressed term limits, which he has quite forgotten. Two, he has twice voted against adherence to the Geneva Convention and for torture as a so-called tool against terrorism. Not only is that position morally indefensible, but also it runs counter to our American and Christian values. Three, one trillion dollars will be spent on an ill conceived war doing untold damage to our psyche and economy that will take years to repair, partly thanks to his votes. Every day that passes, Guantanamo Bay undermines our value system, holding people with no recourse (until mandated by the courts) to lawyers. What a message to send to the world! Will Rep. Hasting speak out against this? No, and with such votes and inaction Rep. Hastings undermines more of our American values. What a legacy; warrantless wiretapping, no Habeas Corpus, billions for Iraq but not for kids, and votes for torture. Way to go Rep. Hastings and please go soon.

Sea to Sea in Kennawack

What a great visit from the C2C cyclists in Kennewick (I know that some of them wanted Kennewick to rhyme with Chilliwack, as in Kenniwack) on Sunday. We worshipped with them, helped feed them lunch, drove them to places like laundromats and REI, and just hung out with them, too. We put on a skit for them using bikes and some decent humor. My great line about the "goathead theology" was lost when my mike was not working. Goatheads are the thorns in the tires (not the flesh although they will go there, too) that are causing havoc with the cyclists. I was going to tell them that they were invented by Bush and the Department of Homeland Security to prevent invasions from Canadian cyclists and that the gathering in Kennewick showed that it didn't work. Because there they were. All the way from Canada via Seattle.

By the way, goathead theology teaches that 'goatheads were not in the Garden of Eden but have "Total Depravity" written all over them' and that changing a flat tire is a bit like getting cleansed from a sin. Then the C2C devotional book had a very cool devotion on the wheel and the parts of the wheel and how they fit together to make the wheel work.

Go do something beautiful!

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