Tumbleweeds are a familiar sight to most people who live in the western United States. They’re brown, round and can be found rolling across the street on windy days.
In early March, tumbleweeds took over a town in Utah, causing cars and houses to disappear from plain sight.
How did it happen? And why do we have tumbleweeds in the first place?
What are tumbleweeds?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that a tumbleweed is a type of plant that “breaks away from its roots in the autumn and is driven about by the wind as a light rolling mass.”
According to the Natural History Museum in London, the tumbleweed is also known as a Russian thistle. It’s part of the amaranth family, and it’s highly invasive.
Tumbleweeds originated in Russia and Siberia and they were brought to the United States in the 1870s, hidden among imported flax seeds, according to University of California, Riverside. It only took 20 years for the plants to spread throughout the western United States and parts of Canada.
The Natural History Museum describes the tumbleweed takeover as the fastest plant invasion the U.S. has ever seen.
Why do tumbleweeds ... tumble?
Tumbling describes the rolling motion a tumbleweed makes when it’s ready to release its seeds. PBS NewsHour explains that “by bouncing and rolling in the wind, a tumbleweed spreads out tens of thousands of seeds so that they all get plenty of sunlight and space.”
Tumbleweeds can create dangerous situations, per PBS NewsHour.
- Large tumbleweeds crossing the road can surprise motorists and cause car accidents.
- Tumbleweeds can pile up against buildings and, due to their dry exterior, can become a fire hazard.
- The plant is covered in prickly dry leaves, so it hurts to touch them.
Other dangers associated with the tumbleweed stem from its ability to block irrigation and water lines, transmit deadly viruses to plants and activate allergies, per the Natural History Museum.
More tumbleweeds are coming — and they’re big
A study from 2019 found that there was a new type of tumbleweed that’s able to grow up to 6 feet tall, according to University of California, Riverside. Called Salsola ryanii, it is a hybrid between two other types of tumbleweeds, which contributes to its growth.
This large tumbleweed was seen on a California freeway in November 2023, according to NPR. A video of the tumbleweed shared on social media showed it to be as large as a car.
According to NPR, these large tumbleweeds are expected to invade more areas of the U.S. due to climate change. Current tumbleweeds are invasive in 48 states, per University of California, Riverside.
Yet they became a movie icon
Tumbleweeds are often seen in Wild West movies, tumbling across the vacant desert.
We can see in the beginning of the trailer for the 2011 animated movie “Rango” a tumbleweed sitting alone in a hot empty desert.
According to Medium, tumbleweeds became a tradition in the cinematic world, especially when it came to representing the Wild West. Medium reports that the tumbleweed came to represent “themes of solitude, change, and the raw beauty of the Western landscape.”
The tumbleweed became a classic way to convey the “harsh realities of the West. Ghost towns, abandoned homesteads, and dusty main streets came to life with the tumbleweed’s signature roll,” per Medium.