No bur is a friendly bur, but we have a variety of bur (or burr, depending on your taste for repeated consonants) here in central Texas that are colloquially referred to as "goatheads" and are basically armor-piercing plant husks that want to hurt you more than anything else. They puncture bicycle tires and feel like stepping on long, sharp tacks, designed as though they wished to nourish the nascent embryo with drops of fresh blood.

They were my introduction to the idea that a wild lawn like ours (seeded decades ago and only half-heartedly maintained) could not be walked in barefoot for several months out of the year.


The plant goatheads come from, Tribulus terrestris, is an Old World plant that is naturalized to the Americas, and also goes by the name goathead as well as puncture vine, yellow vine, and caltrop. It likes warmth and low moisture, and once it makes it's mark it is hard to get rid of because the seed is viable for 3-7 years.

Oddly, there is a person who is prepared to offer these seeds in trade. Maybe you could send the person a vial of skunk scent in exchange for them.

That said, they are lovely little pieces of natural weaponry, and in fact they have been weaponized: In southern Africa, goatheads have been smeared with the poisonous juices of another plant and scattered where a victim is expected to walk.

From the Onion opinion desk this week comes a column by Bur #318 entitled "I Have Completed Stage One Of Our Plan To Take Over The World." An excerpt:

Stage One, Sequence B: I have successfully attached myself to the host sock. As planned, the 100 percent cotton sock proved suitable for my naturally adhesive hooks. In this regard, our calculations were beyond sound - they were flawless. Prior concerns that wind resistance might prematurely dislodge me from the sock were entirely unfounded. The denim pant leg adjacent to the host sock acted as a protective barrier, holding me firmly in place for the duration of the journey.

Stage One, Sequence C: By my best estimate, I have successfully traveled 3.45 miles from Parent Organism Beta 51.2-6. I now sit at a prime vantage point from which to colonize the surrounding hills and meadows. Contact with foreign soil forthcoming.

If goatheads wrote a column, the text would read something like "Kill! Kill!"

I dislike lawn care, but I also dislike having a lawn covered in flesh penetrating devices.

We have never gone the route of pre-emergent pesticides with our lawn in the several years we've lived in our home - in part because we avoid toxic chemicals where we can and haven't done the research to figure out what's the least harmful effective option, and in part because we like the idea of a lawn "ecosystem" instead of a monoculture, which makes sense to us even more because we live in the country on two acres, which means a range of biomes beyond the basic "lawn" area. We like the idea of xeriscaping, but even this would be done in stages - two acres is a lot of space - and we may like to have some small patch of lawn when we're done, especially if it is not one that attacks us for several months out of the year.

Anyone have some simple suggestions for helping our lawn fend off these pointy invaders?

Top image by Karate Putter, shared via Flickr.