Tumbleweed (not native)

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground!
Lonely, but free, I’ll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds

Tumbling tumbleweeds – an iconic image of the Old West, along with wild mustangs, wagon wheels and Billy the Kid.  In truth, the tumbleweed (or Russian thistle, Salsola tragus) is not native. It was introduced into the United States in the 1870’s – about the time the Santa Fe Railroad replaced the Santa Fe trail as a major transportation corridor westward. Since then, the plant has tumbled rapidly through the west, and into cowboy songs and movies, at the same time becoming one of the most noxious weeds of dry rangeland.

A tumbleweed is a prickly sphere. Flowers are tiny and lack petals, but a colorful collar develops around each small seed pod, giving the appearance of blooms. Ultimately, the entire plant breaks free from the ground and is tumbled by the wind, fragmenting the branches and dispersing the seeds of future plants. One plant may have tens of thousands of seeds.

Description ^4,59,306

Tumbleweed is a rounded, much-branched annual plant usually four feet (1.2 m) or less in height, with several main stems arising from a taproot. Young growth is green and somewhat pliant; older leaves and branches are stiff and spinescent. Stems are ridged and often striped with red. Leaves are narrowly linear, almost cylindrical, narrowing to a spine-tipped point that becomes rigid and painful with age.

Flowers are inconspicuous or invisible without magnification, solitary at nodes; they are subtended and hidden by three leaf-like bracts. The bisexual flowers lack petals, having only sepals, five stamens and one pistil with a forked style. The five small white to greenish sepals cup the superior ovary, their tips forming a tent around the style.  Blooms are generally present between July and October.⁷

The fruit is a dry, thin-walled, one-seeded structure. As the fruit matures, the bases of sepals develop wings; these overlap and form a broad collar around the fruit. When young, this collar is translucent white, sometimes tinged with shades of yellow and pink. The collar matures brown with darker veins.

Classification  

Tumbleweed is a dicot angiosperm in the goosefoot family, Chenopodiaceae.² Plants in this family are often succulent or scaly; many appear weedy; many are salt tolerant. Typical flowers are tiny, greenish and lack petals.^11,34,44,310 The goosefoot family includes well-known edible species such as chard, beets, and spinach, as well as marsh plants like pickleweed (Salicornia pacifica and fat hen (Atriplex prostrata).

This family is currently under study and genetic evidence may result in the Chenopodiaceae being merged with the related Amaranthaceae.^41,44,143

From the images and descriptions in the literature, tumbleweed is similar to Southern Russian thistle (S. australis), distinguished mainly by small differences in size, by the shape of the smaller sepals.² and by the tendency to “tumble”.⁴ Some authorities consider the two conspecifics.^11,67,400 Although not on Nature Collective’s plant list, two confirmed specimens of southern Russian thistle have been reported from the Reserve.⁴³⁷ Without having seen them both side-by-side, I doubt I could distinguish them.

Ecology ^4,5,11,59

Tumbleweed has a unique strategy for seed dispersal. Weak spots in the stem, near the base of the plant, become brittle with age and a gust of wind causes the plant to break away. Without an anchor, the large surface area and relatively light weight allows tumbleweed to role and bounce along the ground, shedding small branches and their attached seeds – like a giant salt shaker. Since a single plant may shed 20,000 or more seeds,⁵ it is little wonder these plants colonized vast areas of open rangeland very quickly.

Human Uses  

We found no local records of California Indians using tumbleweeds. To the east, the Navajo used tender young sprouts and roasted seeds for food. An infusion of ashes was used as a treatment for smallpox and influenza, and a poultice of chewed plants was applied for ant bites and bee and wasp stings.²⁸²

In the modern West, tumbleweeds are becoming popular for Christmas decorations. Chandler, Arizona builds its annual Christmas tree from hundreds of tumbleweeds, attaching them to a 25-foot frame, spraying them white, adding glitter and stringing them with more than a thousand lights.⁴⁴¹

Tumbleweed snowmen are made from stacked tumbleweeds.  Add  “a button nose, a corn cob pipe and two eyes made out of coal”, and you have a melt-proof Frosty. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 14 foot tumbleweed snowman is a Christmas tradition, welcoming travelers along Interstate 40.⁴⁴²

Interesting Facts ⁴¹

Cares of the past are behind
Nowhere to go, but I’ll find
Just where the trail will wind
Drifting along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds

Tumbling Tumbleweeds was originally written by Bob Nolan who, at the time, was working as a caddy in Los Angeles. It was recorded in 1934 by the Sons of the Pioneers and was made famous by the 1935 Gene Autry movie of the same name. The Western Writers of America named it #8 in the top 100 Western songs of all times. (Ghost Riders in the Sky is #1).