Puncturevine, AKA goatheads, caltrops, devil’s thorn, and tribulus terretris. You’ve seen and and you hate it. I hate it. Everybody hates it.

It is the bane of cyclists, gardeners, and barefoot children everywhere. With its sharp penetrating thorns and prostrate habit, it is the worst weed ever. How did it get here?

I have been told by some people that puncturevine was imported and planted around Chico on the orders of Annie Bidwell so that the local Indians, the Mechoopda Maidu, would have to wear shoes.

That would be a nasty thing to do, but it’s not true. To promote that idea is a scurrilous slander of Mrs. Bidwell. To be sure, she wanted the Indians on Rancho Chico to adopt and adapt to European-American ways, and with that goal she promoted education, Christianity, and Western customs. But she had nothing to do with puncturevine.

How do we know?

The University of California put out a bulletin in May 1932: The Puncture Vine in California, by Ethelbert Johnson. Puncturevine is not a native plant; it originally came from Europe to the U.S. It spread throughout the Southwest during the latter 19^th century. It first appeared in southern California around 1903, spreading up from Arizona. At that time it doesn’t seemed to have reached northern California, but the weeds ability to hitchhike on car tires and railroad cars accelerated its spread throughout California. In 1920 the State Department of Agriculture reported that:

It has now spread over a large area in the Upper San Joaquin Valley, and is found in a nearly unbroken line along- the railroads northward to San Joaquin County. In the Sacramento Valley it has been found at Woodland, Durham, and Marysville, and is reported as widespread along the railroads in Tehama County.

So you can blame the railroads for its spread, but not Annie Bidwell. If it had invaded the ranch, she would have hated it as much as you or I do.