But for people who live in dry parts of western North America, the tumbleweed is, in fact, a weed that can block doors or clog waterways as they gather in piles. They’re neighborhood nuisances that create fire hazards. They also cause accidents when they roll out onto roadways.Īs it turns out, tumbleweeds are not native to the United States. They’re invasive Russian thistles that flower, die, dry up into a spiny skeletal ball, and roll. Tumbleweeds start out as any plant, attached to the soil. Seedlings, which look like blades of grass with a bright pink stem, sprout at the end of the winter.īy summer, Russian thistle plants take on their round shape and grow white, yellow or pink flowers between thorny leaves. ![]() Inside each flower, a fruit with a single seed develops. Starting in late fall, they dry out and die, their seeds nestled between prickly dried leaves. The day after Christmas this year we took our usual family road trip to grandma's through the dairy deserts. ![]() Gusts of wind easily break dead tumbleweeds from their roots. ![]() Apparently we normally avoided the wind because as we drove through a dust cloud as thick as London fog the road filled with high speed tumbleweeds, and amongst this two in particular were coming right at us-the size of the ones in that gif. A microscopic layer of cells at the base of the plant - called the abscission layer - makes a clean break possible and the plants roll away, spreading their seeds. Then explore the tumbleweed’s classic image in American pop culture with this tumbleweed supercut by Duncan Robson, a short video commissioned by the Columbus Museum of Art: Learn more from the Deep Look video above: Why do tumbleweeds tumble? When the rains come, an embryo coiled up inside each seed sprouts.
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