Americanized Puncture Vine Gardens: Droughty, Spine-Tingling Barriers

Summary: Americanized puncture vine gardens get droughty, spine-tingling creosote, Jamaican fever vine, lignum vitae, Syrian beancaper and Syrian rue barriers.

puncture vine's lemony yellow flower, foliage and "goathead" fruit nutlet; Kahului, central Maui; Thursday, June 12, 2003, 11:20:12; image #030612-0069: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Americanized puncture vine gardens act as natural barriers along boundaries, buildings, fences, houses and pavement as long as sheep abstain from feeding there and provided that signs advise of bristles and spines.

Sheep wool exports bring puncture vine outside the annual herb's native range along the northern fringes of Africa's Sahara Desert and in southern Europe's Mediterranean-fronting countries. Fruits and seeds catch on sheep while shoots cause light sensitivity that condemns livestock to life cycles in shade and swollen heads, called bighead, in sheep. Puncture vine sometimes damages the central nervous system to such a degree that sheep do not recover from high quarter-stagger, a disease that disrupts their gait.

Bristled foliage and seeds and spiny fruits ease their way into almost any vehicle tire and exact open wounds and physical pain upon livestock and people.

Seedlings favor thick, 0.32- to 0.59-inch- (8- to 15-millimeter-) long, 0.12- to 0.16-inch- (3- to 4-millimeter-) wide cotyledons with creased, rough-textured upper surfaces and notched tips.

The oblong, peach- to green-colored embryonic leaves grow from stems whose colors go toward salmon orange-pink below cotyledons and whose surfaces get covered with short hairs. Mature puncture vines have mat-like, prostrate, spreading growth habits 16.4 feet (5 meters) across and 8.53-foot- (2.6-meter-) deep, rootlet-riddled taproots 21.65 feet (6.6 meters) in diameter. Bristly, dense hairs inundate green to red-brown, 7.88-foot- (2.4-meter-) long stems around which compound, 2.36-inch- (6-centimeter-) long foliage is positioned oppositely in Americanized puncture vine gardens.

Leaves juggle two 0.39-inch- (1-centimeter-) long basal membranes called stipules and eight to 16 hairy, 0.19- to 0.59-inch- (5- to 15-millimeter-) long, 0.19-inch- (5-millimeter-) wide leaflets.

Seed germination kicks off, within two weeks, April- through October-blooming communities of pale yellow solitary flowers in the axil unions of puncture vine leaves and stems.

Flowers, 0.79 inches (2 centimeters) across, look brightly busy with one pistil, five petals, five sepals and 10 stamens in alkaline, dry soils like their homeland's. Each perfect, regular flower's petals and sepals measure 0.12 to 0.47 inches (3 to 12 millimeters) and 0.12 to 0.19 inches (3 to 5 millimeters) long. Americanized puncture vine gardens nurture, five weeks after germination, podlike, 0.47-inch- (1.2-centimeter-) long schizocarps, within which nestle five triangular, two- to four-spined, woody segments called mericarps.

Puncture vine, also called bullhead, caltrop, goathead, ground burnut, Mexican sandbur, tackweed and Texas sandbur, offers one to four seeds per mericarp and 10,000 per plant.

One to two 0.12- to 0.19-inch- (3- to 5-millimeter-) long spines protect puncture vine seeds, whose six-month to one-year dormancy at 1.97-inch (5-centimeter) depths precedes germination.

Ridged, tan, wedge-shaped, white-bristled, 0.19- to 0.22-inch- (4.7- to 5.7-millimeter-) long, 0.14- to 0.24-inch- (3.5- to 6-millimeter-) wide seeds quit being viable after five soil-bound years. Puncture vine, Zygophyllaceae family member scientifically called Tribulus terrestris (land-dwelling caltrop), receives unwelcome weed status in Iowa and North Carolina and in Alberta and British Columbia. It shares weed designations with New Mexico-shunned Syrian rue in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon and with Syrian beancaper in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

Americanized puncture vine gardens team the Zygophyllaceae family-related caltrops creosote, Jamaican fever vine, lignum vitae, Syrian beancaper and Syrian rue into drought-tolerant, research-worthy, spine-tingling natural barriers.

puncture vine's flowers and leaves: Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

puncture vine's lemony yellow flower, foliage and "goathead" fruit nutlet; Kahului, central Maui; Thursday, June 12, 2003, 11:20:12; image #030612-0069: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/starr-environmental/24008513703/; Forest & Kim Starr (Starr Environmental), CC BY 4.0 International, via Starr Environmental @ http://www.starrenvironmental.com/images/image/?q=24008513703

puncture vine's flowers and leaves: Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5499323

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "Tribulus terrestris." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 387. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358406