It’s been a long struggle, but my ally, the Marathon Man, and I have declared victory over goat’s head.
Not all goat’s head, mind you. These weeds with their spiked seed heads are a scourge across the West. The plant is also known unaffectionately as puncture vine, as in puncturing your toe through your sneaker or your bicycle tube or even an automobile tire.
On the latter I’m skeptical, but I have personal experience with goat’s head living up to their reputation on toes and bicycles.
Our battle with goat’s head began a few years back when Marathon Man bought himself a house in Billings, near the college where he coaches track. The goat’s head lived in the backyard of his new place. He signed papers midsummer, and by then grass had overrun the flower bed so he didn’t know the weeds were there. But the flower bed was on the path to the garbage bin in the back alley, and that winter we started tracking goat’s head back into the house.
Those suckers hurt when you find one while padding about for a glass of water in the middle of the night.
That spring we went to war. The flower bed was filled with goat’s head seeds, and once it warmed, puncture vine plants sprouted across it. We attacked with herbicides and fire.
In the following summers, when I returned to visit, we went after them again. We burned off the old growth, then sprayed the new sprouts before the vines produced pretty yellow flowers that eventually turned into nature’s version of the business end of a medieval flail.
We were relentless, making sure none of the weeds matured, which would add to the seed bank preserved in the soil.
The literature says those seeds can last two or three years before sprouting, and that’s how long we’ve been at it. And now, finally, as spring gives way to summer, the flower bed seems free of goat’s head. There are plenty of other weeds coming up, but none are those evil little vines with small, paired leaves radiating out from a central tap root.
The goat’s head put up a good fight, but the battle Marathon Man and I waged was fairly limited in scope. The flower bed was just a few feet wide running along the back fence of a city lot. Our conflict was manageable. Two guys kept on it, intermittently, over the course of three summers, and prevailed.
Compare that to the battle we face with noxious weeds across the West. There are 27 million acres of public land in Montana alone, and there are about 8.2 million acres in the state (public and private) infested with noxious weeds.
The rapid spread of invasive plants is illustrated by a series of maps in the Montana Noxious Weed Management Plan that show the extent of spotted knapweed. In 1925, only Missoula County was colored red to mark knapweed infestations. By 1975, knapweed had spread across much of western Montana, including Flathead County.
In the current map, all of Montana is red.
The impact noxious weeds have on wild places is profound. Knapweed and leafy spurge displace forage plants and make the land less productive for wildlife and livestock. One study showed elk use on winter range increased 266% after knapweed was removed.
Weeds also harm waterways. Sites infested with knapweed produce 56% more runoff and sediment yield was 192% more than from sites dominated by native bunchgrass.
As a wise person once said: stuff flows downhill.
Goat’s head is an Old World plant, spread to North America by humans and livestock. Though nasty, it doesn’t even make Montana’s list of the 33 worst noxious weed offenders.
We won our battle against goat’s head, but the war against noxious weeds seems eternal.
Rob Breeding writes and blogs at www.mthookandbullet.com.