Tumbleweed: Meet the Plant That Swallows Neighborhoods and Causes Road Accidents

Tumbleweeds are plants notoriously known for swallowing neighborhoods and causing road accidents. However, it is a famous icon or sighting in classic movies, where the setting is in the middle of a desert or an arid region in the drought-stricken region of the western United States.

Also called the Russian thistle, sometimes spelled as the tumble weed, the tumbleweed is part of the upper anatomy of multiple plant species. However, it detaches from the plant driven by strong winds, becoming a rolling mass of leaves.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers tumbleweeds as a non-native, invasive plant across the country, despite being an icon in the American West or the Old West. While the rolling plant can cause disruption and inconvenience to drivers and homeowners, these new shoots also benefit the ecosystem, mainly by being one of the sources of food of many animal species, including birds, deer, prairie dogs, and other herbivores animals.

What is a Tumbleweed?

(Photo : Photo by Luismi Sánchez on Unsplash)
Tumbleweed in the middle of the road between field during day. Socuéllamos. Spain.

Although the tumble weed is not a thistle, its name can be traced back to the bushy plant Russian thistle in 1873, a time when Russian immigrants arrived in the state of South Dakota. The immigrants were carrying flax seeds that were seemingly contaminated with Russian thistle seeds (Salsola tragus). Once sown, these non-native plants quickly sprout and detach from the plant root and blown away, dispersing seeds as they tumble and roll over the ground.

In 1893, a USDA employee, named L. H. Dewey, wrote that the Russian thistle entered the US through South Dakota via import of the plant from Europe during the 1870s, citing that the bad reputation behind the plant was long known in the wheat regions of Russia. Furthermore, previous evidence shows that the spread of tumbleweeds is apparently resistant to natural predators and diseases affecting plants.

Also Read: Australia: Intense Windstorm Flooded Melbourne with Tumbleweed

US Tumbleweed Invasion

According to the Natural History Museum (NHM), tumbleweeds are the "primary antagonist" in the real-life story about one of the fastest plant invasions in US history. One of the most evident reasons for such designation is that the Russian thistle is not native to North America, but it became naturalized eventually. In fact, the tumbleweed is native to the dry and semi-dry environments of Europe and Central Asia. In the US, farmers were some of the first people who noticed the arrival of the invasive plant, the NHM says.

In today's time, tumble weeds can be found in all US states except for Alaska and Florida. On the other hand, there also native tumble weed species in North America, like the Amaranthus albus but has not been deemed as problematic plant species.

Earlier this year, one of the instances of a tumbleweed invasion is in the Texas town of Wolfforth, where residents woke up one day only to see a ball-like mass of plants surrounding their homes, as well as blocked alley and streets.