Goathead gold mine

What many consider a noxious weed can be turned into a cash crop.

The seed pod of Tribulus terrestris, commonly known as goatheads, puncture vine or toritos, is available to the industrious soul to market to Chinese medicine practitioners.

“This plant, commonly considered a noxious weed, is a useful medicinal herb in Chinese and Western medicine,” said Charles Martin of NMSU’s Sustainable Agriculture Science Center in Alcalde.

Martin is collecting the pods as part of an herb economic development program. Martin is buying the pods from 4-H clubs and other youth groups across the state to be included in sample packs that are to be distributed by the Medicinal Herb Consortium, directed by medicinal herbalist Jean Giblette of High Falls Gardens in Philmont, N.Y. The consortium of herb grower associations in five states, including New Mexico, makes domestically grown or wild-harvested plants used in oriental medicine available to acupuncturists and practitioners in a sample pack of about 35 herbs. Ci ji li – the Chinese name for the plant known in New Mexico as goathead – is one of them.

“The packets are to let Chinese medicine practitioners know the quality of herbs that are available from American farmers,” Giblette said. “Charles Martin has been supplying us Tribulus terrestris for a couple of years.”