1/31/2024 0 Comments Tublme appked![]() These skeletal remains of Russian thistle may become tangled in electrical lines and clog water treatment plants. They pile up against fence gates, buildings, vehicles, or each other. Tumbleweeds are not only useless to farmers and ranchers, but sometimes the rolling plants can be a hazard. Harm crops: Tumbleweeds are a nuisance to agriculture because they deprive crops of water and act as a breeding ground for damaging insects and pathogens.Due to turned-over soil from road grading, they will undoubtedly take over the area, displacing native plants and animals. Disrupt ecosystems: Tumbleweeds are highly invasive weeds.The pointy tips of the Russian thistle can puncture the skin of both humans and animals and cause dermatitis or infection. Allergic reactions: Some people are allergic to the pollen and sap of Russian thistle.They are a severe risk for spreading wildfires. Fire hazards: Tumbleweed stems can burn quickly and get remarkably hot because of their light, airy structure.Pest problems:: “In California’s Central Valley, tumbleweeds aid several insect pests of many vegetable crops like the beet leafhopper, Say’s stinkbug, and lygus bug because these insects feed on tumbleweed in the late summer, when there is nothing else to feed on,” says Smith.Tumbleweeds are not only a prickly nuisance to snag your clothes and scratch your car, but these rolling balls of chaos can cause other problems. Photo Credit: Lisa Risager / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 It has also reached parts of Southern Africa, Australia, and Central and South America. They extend from China to the majority of Europe and North Africa. Tumbleweeds have spread across the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and southern Canada. “Spreading rapidly as it is over new territory and becoming more destructive in the region already infested, it threatens serious consequences unless prompt measures are taken to subdue it.” He reported that the weed posed an existential threat to farms. In 1894, the USDA dispatched botanist Lyster Hoxie Dewey to investigate. “Cattle will graze it when the plants are young (before the leaves get spiny).” Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS). ![]() “Since the plant did not appear in North America until the 1870s, Native Americans have had relatively little time to discover a use for it,” says Lincoln Smith, a research entomologist with the U.S. The plant also contains nitrates and soluble oxalates in levels that are poisonous to sheep. They had few predators and offered little to farmers as a viable crop. Tumbleweeds sprouted quickly when the early farmers planted the infected grain, thriving in cleared areas of land and surviving on very little water. The shrubby plants proved they excelled at one thing - seed dispersal. Tumbleweeds had reached the California coast by 1895. In 1881, the county of Bon Homme, South Dakota, gave the United States Department of Agriculture its first note of concern about tumbleweeds. “The seeds arrived in grain imported from Russia (eastern Asia) by immigrant farmers in the western United States,” says David Salman, Chief Horticulturist for High Country Gardens in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The spread of Russian thistle resulted in one of the fastest plant invasions in American history. They are invasive plants that hitchhiked to the United States with imported flax seeds during the 1870s. Origin of Tumbleweeds in the U.S.Įarly species of tumbleweeds are not a native part of the landscape of the American West as much as old westerns might make you think. During the Dust Bowl period in the 1930s, it was used as forage hay out of desperation when grasses failed.įun Fact: Tumbleweeds are not only a group of plants, but “tumbleweed” also refers to a process of seed dispersal adopted by multiple species of unrelated plants. Still, once the plant has dried to a skeletonized ball of branches, it rarely becomes the breakfast of animals. Small rodents and antelope might eat the tender shoots. Unlike other weed seeds, which can live for decades, most tumbleweed seeds only remain viable for one year (though some live up to three years). The seeds germinate in the spring, flower in the summer or fall (depending on the species), and reproduce only by seed. Bright green and succulent when growing, the Russian thistle has reddish or purple shoots and green flowers accompanied by spiky bracts. Although many species of tumbleweeds exist, Russian thistle ( Salsola tragus) is probably the best known. Tumbleweeds are a group of several species of plants that, once mature, dry out, sever themselves from the root, and are rolled along by the wind. ![]() Photo Credit: funkblast / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
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