Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

Tumblegeddon

 

Cow hands, wagon trains, Indian tribes, buffalo herds, there are many icons of the Old West, but  none are more  a prominent staple of Western movies and American imagination. None say  "You gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?" like the twisted balls of dead foliage that roll across deserts and roam the open range: Tumbleweeds.

 And  they may be romantic symbols of our national love affair with the Wild West, but tumbleweeds are   invasive  weeds  called Russian thistle, and many modern-day Westerners are not fans, claiming the Russians taking over. (The weeds, I mean.)

Tumbleweeds are complex.  They start out fledgling thistle bushes, with beautiful  reddish-purple striped stems, tender leaves, and delicate flowers. Animals feed on the succulent new shoots, including mule deer, pronghorn sheep,  prairie dogs and birds.  Cattle  find the shoots tasty as well, and this saved many herds from starving during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s when there was nothing else for them to eat. The bushes can grow more than 3 feet tall, and they get “angrier” as they age growing very sharp spines and there is another nasty trammel to the tumbleweed thistle.

Tumbleweeds have never stopped spreading. Nearly every state in the U.S. is now home to these road roamers, and they can be more than an agricultural nuisance, sometimes aggregating to the point they prevent people from entering or leaving their homes, block driveways, roads and then there’s the fire hazard.

“You say they are invasive?” How did they get here? They were stowaways.   

              

The plucky little pips hitchhiked with unwitting travelers in 1873. Enduring accidents, exhaustion, disease, storms, and the occasional Indian attack. Russian immigrants traveling through the Black Hills  (That’s Pahá Sápa in Lakota.)  had no idea that some of the sacks of flax seed tied to the sides of their prairie schooners were contaminated with Russian thistle seeds (Salsola tragus). Once they hit the ground, these Europeans quickly sprouted, unhampered by natural predators and disease. Each winter after Russian thistle plants die, they leave a legacy. The brittle bushy parts snap off at the roots and blow away, dispersing seeds merrily along wherever they tumble. They number about 250,000 per plant.

Because Russian thistle thrives on little precipitation and easily exploits disturbed land stripped of native species, it was able to quickly take hold in the vast agricultural fields and overgrazed range lands of the arid West. By the end of the 1800s, this intruder had already rolled its way across most western states and right on up into Canada,  eh, carried by wind and  railroad cars.

A government botanist sent to investigate Tumbleweeds in the early 1890s could barely believe his eyes: "One almost continuous area of about 35,000 square miles had become  covered with the Russian thistle in the comparatively brief period of twenty years.

In some “parts” -  like in the City of El Paso, there are times when the tumbleweeds get  out of control, blocking entrances to homes, driveways and roads. They get so bad the kids have trouble  trying to get to school. Imagine “A Tumbleweed Day.”  Townsfolk call this  Tumblegeddon.

Yikes!