do tumbleweeds actually blow around in the southwest or is that a myth…?
!!! They do!!!
Tumbleweed is actually an invasive species from Siberia. What happens is when the soil gets too dry the roots come out of the ground and the plant curls up into a ball so that it can blow to a new spot. When it comes into contact with wet soil its roots will unfold and it will settle down.
That is ten times more fucked up than I thought. They plant themselves again? That’s neat. I always thought they were just dead leaves and twigs in a bunch.
I like this. Tumbleweeds just fuck off when they don’t like a place, they are not like other plants who have to respect your plant rules, they are rebels.
Unless someone can provide me with a source that says otherwise, this is 100% not true, and I have looked into it. While the most common tumbleweed in North America (salsola tragus) is an invasive plant that was brought here by Russian settlers in the 1870s (to North Dakota) it does no blow to a new spot and “unfold its roots”.
They are unusual in that how they spread their seeds is by weakening part of the stem above the roots, which then allows the top (for pretty much all intents and purposes, the entire plant, missing the root system) and so the plant can dry out an bounce around the world, dropping literally thousands of seeds as it goes. The tumbleweed does not, however, resettle. The tumbling part itself is dead, and only a vehicle for transmitting seeds.
Additionally, as someone who has lived all their life in the west, these things are crazy. They are very good at planting in disturbed land (you know, pretty much all of the West in farms and ranges at this point) and can grow HUGE.
This one is apparently not even exceptional, and I will attest to driving south between Cheyenne and Denver one time and seeing a tumbleweed that appeared to be the size of a volkswagen bug come onto I-25 and plow into a Jeep Ranger, where it exploded like some god-awful plant bomb, spewing seed and broken branches over approximately the entire goddamn state of Colorado. Also, there are so many.
They are also crazy flammable, and catch on every fence, and also other bushes, and cars, you if you stand still too long, and pretty much anywhere else garbage collects. I’ve seen these things piled so high in Wyoming and Colorado that the above pictures are minor inconveniences. They will bury fences. You could walk across the ditches they fill except that you’d fall in and probably die of a million tiny cuts. People have to do controlled burns of the things because they are bonfires waiting to happen.
tl;dr: No they don’t replant themselves, and yeah, they’re blowing the fuck across the southwest, and the regular west, and Canada, and they’re coming for you like a damn zombie apocalypse.
“brains…”
In souther Alberta, Canada we have tumbleweeds as well. But they are small and don’t replant, they just blow away after they die
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 