As a survival-focused melee character, I have a need for tremendous amounts of white horsenettle. It can cost 10 to make one portion of poison, or 5-10 for one gecko hide (which seems to only be useful for making a tiny amount of caps). However, I almost never see the plants. I've read, in the wiki, that they're located "near Goodsprings and Primm," but even focusing my search on those areas, I come up with next to nothing.

Does anyone have a super-secret vendor or location to find/buy these things? It strikes me as a very unfortunate design decision to make recipes requires more of one plant than some gamers would see in the entire game, just to tan a hide.

I know what you mean, I have a bunch of Gecko hides and turpentine, but not enough Horsenettle to tan even one hide.

I ordered a Strategy guide from Amazon though, so hopefully it has useful tips on gathering spots...

Yeah, it's starting to get annoying, seeing all those awesome poisons and taking ages to be able to create a single vial.

That said, plants respawn. Once you do find a spot (I found one with about 3-5 of them, north of Primm), you can come back another day to get more. I have like 20 roughly 2 hours into the game with my unarmed run.

How do you make poisons? Do they go on the melee weapons like Rogues in WoW?

Just a bit outside primm near the road there are a few plants to pick.

Around Bolder City I picked up ~ 18

the corridor from good springs source to primm is loaded with Horsenettle, broc, xander, and jalapenos

also as mentioned, the area around boulder city is loaded with it.

i want to say there is an area up north that has alot of Horsenettle, but i cant recall atm. maybe around camp golf too.