and now for a word about tumbleweeds

tumbleweed

from this site :


Tumbleweed was given the name Salsola australis in 1810 by Robert Brown from the British Museum. He discovered it in Australia. Even though he was the first to classify the plant, he didn't get credit for his work for 170 years. Another scientific name is Salsola kali, but it's also popularly called saltwort, Russian cactus, wind witch, buckbush, soft rolypoly and prickly rolypoly.

There are actually several species of plant that are called "tumbleweed". They all live on flat, open areas, so that the wind can easily blow them around. They all use the strategy of scattering their seeds around as they roll.

Salsola belongs to the spinach family. It is common in Asia, North America, Australia and Africa, and it grows into a ball. Another "tumbleweed", the Rose of Jericho, Anastatica hierochuntica, lives in the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa. It's a delicate wild mustard that looks like a normal plant while it's alive. But when it dries out, it curls up into a ball. The wind rolls it across the desert until it get wet. Then the branches straighten up again, and the seeds drop out. The tumbleweed is not such a pest anymore, since the introduction of phenoxy herbicides in World War II. But it still costs millions of dollars to clean it out of canals and from the side of the road. And motorists still end up in hospital, after trying to outrace a tumbleweed on a windy day.

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