Gunther20

This winter keeps dragging on and I'm getting closer to making plans to drive south for a weekend of real outside cycling and it got me thinking about whether I might find goatheads wherever I go.

To my knowledge, these little buggers do not exist in Minnesota. At least I haven’t seen one here anyway. My only encounter with one was while driving through western Kansas my daughter wanted to stop at a wheat field. I pulled into a farm driveway, she got out with bare feet, and promptly found one stuck to the bottom of her foot! So western Kansas, check. Tell me what other states they can be found in.

Also, are goatheads only an issue when they are actively growing or are they a year-round nuisance? Do you have to ride over the plants or can you pick up the thorns anywhere? Even on the road or on a trail?

Finally, what can be done to mitigate the issue? Are there certain tires, tire liners that have been proven effective? Yes I am already aware that a tubeless setup can be effective. I don’t need this thread to turn into a tube/tubeless argument, just want to gain a better understanding of goatheads.

spelger

Nevada, at least near reno. I don't ride over plants (road). But still pick them up from time to time. In my experience they need to be dry to do their job.

headwind15

I lived in Albuquerque, and I believe that is the goat head epicenter. There is a bike path that parallels hwy 40 that has a gauntlet of four foot high goat head bushes. (usually goat heads come from a closer to the ground, yellow flowering vine), be there were at least four feet tall. There must have been thousands of those little devils on the ground. Fortunately, I lived less than a mile away. I knew that my tubes were toast. I just sprinted for as far as I could before I was riding on the rim. When riding off road, this is usually a good reason to stay on the main trail. On the road, cars are your allies. When it comes down to goat head thorn VS car tire, the car tire wins. When road riding in goat head country, it is an advantage to ride in the road were if a thorn is in the road, it gets flattened by a car tire, won't give you a flat. The way to do this is to ride with a rear mirror, and monitor cars back.

zandoval 

Young GI stepped on a Goat Head in Ft Greely Alaska. Of course it had hitched a ride from West Texas in his gear bag. To be sure it was disposed of with extreme prejudice...

CliffordK

They've got them in Eastern Washington.
I haven't seen them in Eastern Oregon, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were around some.

You'll probably find them in semi-arid places across the USA. The same places you might find tumbleweed.

CliffordK

Here is a map of where to avoid riding your bike!!!

Darth Lefty 

There are a lot of good posts on this forum about goatheads. I think Stuart @cyccommute did the best one
Goat Head Thorns?

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

The plant is a low dark green weed with little yellow flowers in season. The seed pod looks like a little skull with horns sticking out, thus the name. The spines are slivers about a quarter inch long and stick up like a caltrop. The hardened seed pods are there year round... true of most things in this half of the country where it only rains a few months out of the year, or even only a few times a year, and the small plants go to seed and die pretty quickly. They grow wherever the desert hardpan has been turned over by humans and yes they do get you on the road because they grow in pavement cracks. Actually maybe more common around suburbs because there's year round water supply.

I do tubeless, but all the kinds of tire armor can be effective too.

Darth Lefty 

Oh, and if all you know about this desert you learned from Westerns, goatheads are not cacti and not from tumbleweeds, a totally different weed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_tragus

spelger

weird that they stop right at the southern border.

Seattle Forrest

They're attached to ornery creatures.

Seattle Forrest

Beyond the Cascades. Rumor is there's a whole continent that way. I guess this explains why I've never seen them, I grew up in the north east and then once I moved out here Sherman Pass is as far east as I've ridden, usually no further than the Methow.

Inusuit

Had them in eastern Colorado. Haven't seen any in southeast Wyoming. And I ride lots of country roads and cow paths.

billridesbikes

Usually they are more of a problem in the fall. Don’t ride over the plants!
On my commuter bike I use a ‘self-sealing’ inner tube which works fine since they make little holes in your tube.
Also resist the urge to pull them out of the tire if you see one stuck, wait until you get home unless you go flat.

bampilot06

Don’t know what Goat Heads are, but we have little prickly balls of doom in certain areas of Virginia. I grew up calling them chiggers, but they are tire killers for sure. Yorktown has a healthy population as well as ft. Monroe. Havnt seen them anywhere else where I usually ride. Avoid the grass and you are usually good.

Shimagnolo

I moved to Colorado (Denver area) in 1996.
Within 2 weeks, I had all 4 tires on 2 bikes flatted by goatheads.

MinnMan

As a fellow Minnesotan, I was unaware when I first encountered them riding outside of Las Vegas some years ago. But the way I got into trouble was by riding off the shoulder onto an unpaved surface.

I've returned to that area many times since, almost always in January as a deep winter escape, and never had another goathead flat. I know they are also on the pavement, but not nearly so abundant.

caloso

Pretty much all of NorCal. Tubeless helps. And don’t pull them out till you get home.

Kabuki12

Southern California is plagued with them. I would say 90% of my flats are from those nasty little things. Listen to caloso, leave them in until you get home! If they are stuck to your tire, they have already pierced the tube, in my experience. Down here the wind blows them onto the roadway so you don’t even have to go off-road.

big john

When they dry out the wind blows them around and you can pick them up anywhere on the road. It's weird that we might not see any for months, then several people will get flats on one ride.

seedsbelize2

I believe we have them here, but have never pulled one off a tire. Plenty stuck to my pants though.

Riveting

One time I pulled a dozen goatheads out of an mtb tire (25psi tubeless with Stan's sealant), when my front wheel went a few inches off the singletrack (and not a single one in my rear tire oddly enough), and every one sealed instantly when pulled out.

I've had MANY more flats on the road bike due to very small metal shards (some say its from steel belted tires), and the only place to get away from those is on the mtb single track, which brings us full circle back to the goatheads.

billridesbikes

That sounds like some kind of thistle maybe. These are like a tougher rose thorn with a seed head that makes them stand up at a perfect angle to puncture your tire! They aren’t sticky, but if you step on one it’s not fun.
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Fredo76

I spent maybe 10 hours early last fall weeding my street. Neighbors would drive by looking at me and wondering WTF?, I'm sure. I probably filled a dozen or so kitchen-size garbage bags with whole mats of the creeping plant, complete with yellow flowers and dozens to hundreds of the little green dingle-balls that dry out into the thorns. You have to get them before they start drying out, or the little dingle-balls (botany term) fall off too easily. I don't really know how many goatheads I got rid of, but I would guess 5-10,000. I think I reduced my chances of getting a flat in the first and last 0.3 miles of any ride, substantially. But once I'm past the stop sign, I'm on my own.

My workhorse bike has thorn-resistant tubes and Mr Tuffy tire liners, but they are very heavy. I've gone with sealant instead for my other two, and that means removable valve-core tubes are needed. Any Schrader valve will work. Presta valves with removable valve cores are less common, but available. Might as well put the sealant in before you have the flat, is my advice. I use Slime for butyl tubes, and Stan's for latex tubes.

Good luck with the goatheads!

Broctoon

As others have mentioned, these things pose the greatest risk in summer and early fall when they are mature and dry. In the springtime they are small and green and don't usually puncture. Likewise in late fall and winter when the ground is wet and they get soggy and kind of soft.

The plant that produces them, which we call a "puncture vine," grows flat along the ground, with a central hub that sends out numerous long, straight stems (like rays), each of which can have several branches spreading off it, with many tiny, sage green leaves among which the thorns are hidden. A mature plant can produce hundreds of thorns each season. I've seen them reach up to 10 or 12 feet in diameter (arms six feet long, going in every direction). They are not particularly hard to pull up, if you carefully watch where you're grabbing. They have only one long, narrow root going straight down from the center.

They are an opportunistic weed that grows where other green plants won't. They thrive in hard, dry, rocky ground and will even take root in pavement cracks and expansion joints. They love hot, dry environments, but will not grow well anywhere that gets plenty of water. They don't grow well anywhere that they have to compete for sunlight; even moderately healthy grass will choke them out.

When mountain biking in desert areas, there is of course a risk of running into them anywhere, however most knobby tires are thick enough to prevent a high risk of punctures. The individual thorns (like goat horns) are usually only about 5mm long at most, however they are very sharp and quite hard late in the season. When road biking, you have to watch for them alongside roads and paths, as the rays can reach several feet across the pavement. They are a real threat to bike tires with inner tubes. In Utah, I've suffered dozens of flats from them before switching to tubeless tires on most of my bikes. As shown in a picture above, they can be a nuisance when they gather in the soles of your shoes, as they can get tracked into the house and then sometimes fall out in the carpet. And they can be a real problem for dogs, getting stuck in their paws.