Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the vault. Uh. This one
Speaker 1: originally aired January eleven two, and it's part one of
Speaker 1: our series on tumbleweeds. This was a fun series. I recall,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to these plants than you might think.
Speaker 1: All right, let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Like many of you
Speaker 1: out there, I've been familiar with with tumbleweeds for a while,
Speaker 1: but almost almost exclusively as just this um sort of
Speaker 1: mundane symbol of the American West, right, you know, men,
Speaker 1: Mainly it's this type of thing you see popping up
Speaker 1: an old westerns or perhaps more to the point, old
Speaker 1: cartoons inspired by old Westerns. Anytime you need the audience
Speaker 1: to understand, this place is is desolate, this place is
Speaker 1: in the American desert, or this place is a ghost town.
Speaker 1: What do you do? You have the old tumbleweed roll by, Yeah,
Speaker 1: tumbleweed means nothing's going on. In fact, I think it's
Speaker 1: even a common gift. Right. You can meme a tumbleweed
Speaker 1: if you are to indicate this thread has died or
Speaker 1: or you know, nobody's got anything to say. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: nobody in here. This is It comes to represent like
Speaker 1: not only desolation, but also uh, emptiness and tedium. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just in boredom. It's like this, this place is empty.
Speaker 1: This place there's nothing going on. This is the domain
Speaker 1: of tumbleweeds. And therefore it's easy to think, well, tumbleweeds
Speaker 1: themselves are boring tumbleweeds. Uh, there's nothing going on with
Speaker 1: tumble weeds. There's It's not the kind of thing you
Speaker 1: could do a two part series on for a podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh but you would be wrong, yes, yes, uh and
Speaker 1: uh and hopefully we will we will prove that in uh,
Speaker 1: in this pair of episodes that we're gonna be doing. Um.
Speaker 1: But but before just a couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 1: was very much of the mind the tumbleweeds. They they
Speaker 1: pop up in movies sometimes a lot of times they
Speaker 1: look fake. Um. Yeah, for we were actually looking at
Speaker 1: some clips prior to recording these. You know, does this
Speaker 1: look like a real tumbleweed or a fake tumbleweed. Um,
Speaker 1: And I wasn't always in a good place to judge this. Well.
Speaker 1: I think one way in which movie tumbleweeds often fall
Speaker 1: short is in size, just the size shown, because the
Speaker 1: tumbleweed in the movie it's always pretty much basketball sized.
Speaker 1: It's very round, or maybe you could say like turkey sized.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a good Thanksgiving turkey, but it's
Speaker 1: made out of twigs. Now, obviously, tumbleweeds can vary in
Speaker 1: size and reality, and we'll we'll explain more about that
Speaker 1: as we go on. But you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: real tumbleweeds I've seen, especially in some of the more
Speaker 1: dramatic uble weed footage where where humanity is really doing
Speaker 1: battle with with tumbleweeds. Uh, they get big, you know,
Speaker 1: they're more in the like beach ball to bean bag
Speaker 1: chair range. Oh absolutely, yeah, you know, thinking about the
Speaker 1: cinematic ones. Yeah, a lot of the times when you
Speaker 1: see a kind of essentially a fake looking kumble weed
Speaker 1: and obvious plant, a plant that is it self a plant, um,
Speaker 1: it will be that beach ball or turkey sized, uh,
Speaker 1: tumbleweed just big enough to where it is amusing, but
Speaker 1: not a threat. Uh, it'll just kind of be, you know,
Speaker 1: lazily rolling by in the background. And uh, one film
Speaker 1: that that I was looking at it was pretty interesting
Speaker 1: because you can see both examples of this, and that's
Speaker 1: the film The Petrified Forest starring Leslie Howard, Betty Davis,
Speaker 1: and Humphrey Bogart, which in and of itself is a
Speaker 1: tremendous film. But some of it is is obviously on
Speaker 1: more of a set or a sound stage, and other
Speaker 1: bits of it are filmed outdoors. Uh, perhaps in actual
Speaker 1: Arizona or at least somewhere in California that that you know,
Speaker 1: fit the bill. Yeah, yeah, And in the location shot,
Speaker 1: in fact, there's an early location shot where you see
Speaker 1: Leslie Howard's character walking down the street there and there's
Speaker 1: a fair sized tumbleweed that that comes in at a
Speaker 1: at a pretty swift pace. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: filmed it in during an actual windstorm or they just
Speaker 1: have some you know, some big fans going. But uh,
Speaker 1: there's a moment there where I when I was rewatching
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, jeez, I hope this doesn't hit
Speaker 1: Leslie Howard. That would uh you know that that that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be very becoming of such a suave character. Well,
Speaker 1: isn't the beginning premise of the film that he has
Speaker 1: traveled out west in order to maybe commit suicide. So
Speaker 1: is it possible that he wanted suicide by tumbleweed? I
Speaker 1: don't know how romantic would that be. Uh? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he says that he he's hoping to one day
Speaker 1: see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drowned in it. But
Speaker 1: but I can't imagine saying I hoped one day too
Speaker 1: to uh run across the six feet tumbleweed and be
Speaker 1: demolished by it. I hope one day to to be
Speaker 1: absorbed by a sea of thorns. Yeah. So yeah, to
Speaker 1: to get back to the to the point here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these tumbleweeds can get rather large. And I never really
Speaker 1: realized this before until this holiday season, this uh that
Speaker 1: we've just gone through because this year or this previous
Speaker 1: year rather just after Christmas, my family we found ourselves
Speaker 1: um driving south from Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona, and then
Speaker 1: west towards Las Cruces before cutting up to Albuquerque and
Speaker 1: then Santa Fe and um, and we were doing this
Speaker 1: because we originally are going to take a northern route
Speaker 1: through Flagstaff, but winter weather forced us to pivot. So
Speaker 1: here we are, Uh, we're going on Interstate ten between
Speaker 1: Tucson and Las Crucis. And what during my stretch of
Speaker 1: the driving, we begin to enter this uh, this this
Speaker 1: this uh you know that you know, we're in the desert,
Speaker 1: is you know, desolate. We get these advisories about possible
Speaker 1: you know, wind possible, uh, dust storms and uh and
Speaker 1: then I begin to see the first tumbleweeds. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, I've been going out west for a while now,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I'd ever really seen a tumbleweed
Speaker 1: in action. Maybe i'd maybe i'd seen one small like
Speaker 1: turkey basketball size one. But this was the first time
Speaker 1: I started seeing some real bad boys, some real monsters
Speaker 1: rolling around. Uh. For first of all, at the you know,
Speaker 1: sort of the side of the road or sometimes like
Speaker 1: stuck up against a fence. But then eventually, uh, they're
Speaker 1: they're crossing the road, they're being blown across the the highway.
Speaker 1: And it's quite alarming because again, some of these are
Speaker 1: are huge. There we were we were commenting at the time,
Speaker 1: perhaps overreacting that they look like they're the know, about
Speaker 1: half the size of a Volkswagen. Did you hit one? Oh? Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: Eventually let's started hitting them and they explode. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of or it's kind of like, um, it's like frosted,
Speaker 1: not frosted of what were they? Yeah, but not the
Speaker 1: many ones, the big ones. Oh yeah, Okay, it's like
Speaker 1: a shredded wheat, like shredded many wheat. Of the shredded
Speaker 1: wheat hitting the front of your car, they just kind of,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, crumple and implode and um, part of it
Speaker 1: gets stuck under the vehicle. But it's alarming because they're
Speaker 1: so big in volume at the size at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I thought of it this way,
Speaker 1: but I was imagining it's like running into a ball
Speaker 1: of about five thousand tooth brushes and toothpicks, all loosely
Speaker 1: taped together. Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's like that. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you're seeing them slam into other vehicles in the the
Speaker 1: opposing side of the highway. I'm watching them just slam
Speaker 1: into the fronts of tractor trailer rigs and and it's
Speaker 1: weird to watch them because on one hand, there there's
Speaker 1: something about the tumble weed moving around that is kind
Speaker 1: of comical. There's something absurd about it, and so I'm
Speaker 1: kind of freaking out about the driving of My wife
Speaker 1: is just like cracking up laughing at these things in
Speaker 1: the seat next to me, and um. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing is the way that they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're not perfect spheres. Uh, They're not perfectly round. They
Speaker 1: have this kind of oblong shape to them, so they
Speaker 1: kind of tumble and bounce, and especially with the you know,
Speaker 1: the uncertainty of the wind and also the aerodynamics of
Speaker 1: the high speed traffic, the way that they behave kind
Speaker 1: of comes to to mimic that of an animal. You're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's it gonna do? Is it
Speaker 1: gonna cross, is it not gonna cross? Is it gonna
Speaker 1: halfway cross? And then change direction? And so all of
Speaker 1: this adds up to this this anxiety I was feeling
Speaker 1: about these tumbleweeds because I'm trying to to to figure
Speaker 1: out what they're going to do and if I'm going
Speaker 1: to hit them, and then I have to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm not going to swerve and make the situation worse. Well,
Speaker 1: so with us talking like this, I immediately wonder if
Speaker 1: it's like if it's like us also talking about trying
Speaker 1: to drive in snow. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 1: the stuff on the internet where anybody who lives up
Speaker 1: north makes fun of people from the south. You're like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like an inch of snow on the
Speaker 1: ground and suddenly nobody can drive. Yeah. I imagine that
Speaker 1: there are some some desert dwellers out there who are
Speaker 1: who are having a laugh at um at at how
Speaker 1: we're talking about this here, And I mean they're probably
Speaker 1: used to it. Uh yeah, I just I don't think
Speaker 1: i'd ever been down there or and I wasn't in
Speaker 1: the right place at the right time to encounter like
Speaker 1: full blown literally full blown tumbleweed season. And I was
Speaker 1: I was actually wondering, why are there no signs advising
Speaker 1: tourists about this, Like they're warning us about what to
Speaker 1: do during the dust storm, But how about it like
Speaker 1: don't swerve, just go ahead and hit the tumbleweed, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of a poster to that effect. Anyway, I afterwards,
Speaker 1: I started looking around because I was curious, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: does this ever get out of hand or is this
Speaker 1: just something where if you're if you live around at
Speaker 1: you're used to it. Well, uh, I did some research online.
Speaker 1: I started running across news stories with headlines featuring things
Speaker 1: like tumbleweed nightmares from as recently as last month, in
Speaker 1: which winds basically blocked certain New Mexico roads with tumbleweeds,
Speaker 1: or a NBC headline quote thirty foot tumbleweed pile up traps, cars,
Speaker 1: semi trucks on Washington Highway or another one. This this
Speaker 1: was quite impressive. Tumbleweeds bear a New Mexico town. And
Speaker 1: if you start looking up footage or images of some
Speaker 1: of this um it's it's not as much of an
Speaker 1: exaggeration as as you think, like you're looking at a
Speaker 1: two story like suburban homes and the tumble weeds, which
Speaker 1: again you're talking about tumbleweeds that can reach, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes like six feet in diameter. They're piling up, They're
Speaker 1: reaching the second floor of the house. Yeah, piled up
Speaker 1: like heavy snow drifts, except probably even more difficult to
Speaker 1: deal with than snow, right because snow, I mean you
Speaker 1: can at least shovel out of the way. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I could say easily, but to some degree easily.
Speaker 1: Tumbleweeds are notoriously difficult to handle and deal with. I
Speaker 1: think because of their size and their shape and the composition,
Speaker 1: like the thorny nous of them, it's difficult to just
Speaker 1: grab them because they're usually thorny and and in some
Speaker 1: way repel your flesh and uh. It's also difficult to
Speaker 1: to sort of scoop them out of the way because
Speaker 1: they tend to break. Yeah. With snow, like, one of
Speaker 1: the great things about snow is that even if you
Speaker 1: don't shovel it um, usually what's gonna happen is it's
Speaker 1: gonna melt. Right, the sun is gonna come out, temperatures
Speaker 1: are gonna rise, that snow is gonna melt. The tumbleweed
Speaker 1: is not going to melt. The tumbleweeds a mask against
Speaker 1: the side of your house might not distribute on their own,
Speaker 1: and they might catch on fire, might catch on fire, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're basically they're dried out, lifeless, brittle um vegetation.
Speaker 1: So they're they're they're a fire hazard. They're a legitimate
Speaker 1: fire hazard clumped up against the side of your house,
Speaker 1: so you've got to get rid of them. Or if
Speaker 1: they're not again, if they're not against the side of
Speaker 1: your house, then they're perhaps blocking the road. Uh. They
Speaker 1: can also cause other issues, you know, they build up
Speaker 1: against fences. They can interfere with with drainage systems. M
Speaker 1: because again, a lot of the environments we're talking about
Speaker 1: here are very dry most of the year, but then
Speaker 1: there will be a deluge and during that time you
Speaker 1: need to have sufficient drainage systems in place. You don't
Speaker 1: need those drainage systems and canals, etcetera clogged with old tumbleweeds.
Speaker 1: They can also interfere with irrigation systems. They can they
Speaker 1: can cause a huge mess, and they do cause traffic accidents. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm read. I was reading about one in Jadito Wash
Speaker 1: that was apparently so impressive that the Arizona Daily Press
Speaker 1: did a ten year anniversary story about the incident, and
Speaker 1: I included a photo from the story in our notes here, Joe,
Speaker 1: it does look quite impressive. You ever, like comb a
Speaker 1: shedding dog and end up with all these clumps of
Speaker 1: hair that you need to get rid of at the end.
Speaker 1: But then now imagine that, but it's twenty ft high. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like like Clifford the Big Red Dog Marmaduke sized
Speaker 1: uh pile of of of shavings here now, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, Yeah, it's difficult to clean all this stuff up.
Speaker 1: What do you have to do? You have to get
Speaker 1: a work crew out there. They've got to to gather
Speaker 1: these materials up. You've got to put them into vehicles, uh,
Speaker 1: and and take them somewhere, take them away, and they're
Speaker 1: mostly air, so you end up like really filling up
Speaker 1: a vehicle. But then you know the weight volume isn't there,
Speaker 1: so uh, you know, you start doing the math on
Speaker 1: on you know, the cost of labor, the cost of materials,
Speaker 1: the cost of transportation, and and the cost end up
Speaker 1: really skyrocketing for the various counties and towns and cities
Speaker 1: that have to engage in this kind of cleanup effort.
Speaker 1: One of the articles we were both reading for this
Speaker 1: episode is a PBS article about tumbleweeds by an author
Speaker 1: named Gabriella Kiros, but citing information from somebody named Ariel
Speaker 1: of Vario, a deputy agricultural commissioner at the county's Weed
Speaker 1: Abatement Division in Lancaster, calif Borno. Ciros writes, quote in
Speaker 1: the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster, tumbleweeds are such a
Speaker 1: big problem that Los Angeles county spends a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars yearly mowing and
Speaker 1: chipping dried out Russian thistle. That's a name of one
Speaker 1: specific dominant species of tumbleweed in vacant lots and abandoned
Speaker 1: agricultural fields before they can tumble away. So this is
Speaker 1: above a hundred thousand dollars a year of a problem
Speaker 1: for one county, I mean big county. But uh, every year,
Speaker 1: it's enough to make you wonder. Um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: got to be a better way, right, It's got to
Speaker 1: be some sort of technological improvement, uh, that that we
Speaker 1: could make that would uh, that would improve this situation.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh And indeed I found evidence of a
Speaker 1: of a really promising and and frightening looking project that
Speaker 1: I'm not sure ever really quite got off the ground.
Speaker 1: But I to read verbatim from this n l A
Speaker 1: Times article by Eddie Pell's go for it all right,
Speaker 1: There we go Los Cruces, New Mexico. It looks like
Speaker 1: a contraption straight out of a Stephen King novel, huge
Speaker 1: metal spoke, squirreling away, shredding everything in its path. But
Speaker 1: the invention from New Mexico State University's Advanced Manufacturing Center
Speaker 1: is out only to mow down the bane of the West,
Speaker 1: the ever present tumbleweed. So you shared video of this
Speaker 1: mangler with me, and it does look like a beast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found this this archived video that was put out
Speaker 1: I think by the by a New Mexico State University
Speaker 1: UM or perhaps the State Highway Department. I forget which,
Speaker 1: but it was it was all about this this promising
Speaker 1: new project, and it included footage of the prototype for
Speaker 1: this that the invention we're talking about is the tumbleweed crumbler.
Speaker 1: It was developed via a forty contract at the time
Speaker 1: to New Mexico State University from the State Highway Department
Speaker 1: develop a better way of collecting and shredding the time
Speaker 1: buble weeds. And the prototype was essentially a pair of rotating,
Speaker 1: like inwardly rotating metal spokes hooked at the front of
Speaker 1: a snow plow truck. Um. Yeah, so it's like drum
Speaker 1: barrels imagine that are sort of rolling inward as if
Speaker 1: you know, to roll things into the gap between them,
Speaker 1: which is pretty small, and that it's got spikes sticking
Speaker 1: out of the drums. Uh. And There's a really excellent
Speaker 1: part of the video where a guy is standing right
Speaker 1: in front of it while it's running, kind of feeding
Speaker 1: tumbleweeds into it, and we were thinking, like, oh, is
Speaker 1: he going to reach in there to try to clear
Speaker 1: out a jam by hand? Yeah, it's gonna be like
Speaker 1: one of those that like shake hands with dangerous safety videos.
Speaker 1: It just looks very unsafe and and I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I may the guitar twine comes in. Johnny
Speaker 1: thought he could save time because the I mean it's terrifying,
Speaker 1: but it also looks really effective. They show it, uh
Speaker 1: like running into mounds of tumbleweeds. These uh, these wheels
Speaker 1: with the with the spikes on them, they grind up
Speaker 1: these these tumbleweeds and then the ground up remnants are
Speaker 1: like sucked up and shot into the back of the
Speaker 1: snowplow truck. So, uh, you know, this seems like it
Speaker 1: seems like it would it would have been a great
Speaker 1: fix because first of all, you have the snowplow trucks
Speaker 1: anyway that are being used during you know, parts of
Speaker 1: the year to to deal with keeping the roads clear,
Speaker 1: and then snowplow trucks without this kind of spike contraction
Speaker 1: are apparently sometimes used to clear the roads of tumbleweeds anyway,
Speaker 1: though of course they're just mostly pushing them out of
Speaker 1: the way and not really you know, not collecting them.
Speaker 1: So it seems like this would have been a cool
Speaker 1: way to to deal with the problem. But so are
Speaker 1: these machines day rigur Now, No, I don't think they are.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, you know, you you see, uh, you
Speaker 1: see an article like this, and you see I see
Speaker 1: footage like this, and again this was ninety six and
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell this this ended up
Speaker 1: not really going too much more beyond the prototype phase
Speaker 1: in the video they're talking about they're going on to
Speaker 1: another as a development. And I don't know. Maybe I
Speaker 1: couldn't find an answer as to why exactly they didn't
Speaker 1: go with this. Maybe it just came down to something
Speaker 1: as mundane as uh, you know, the money or politics, uh,
Speaker 1: cost effective or something. Maybe it just wasn't cost effective.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe it was too dangerous. I have
Speaker 1: no no way of knowing, and I wasn't able to
Speaker 1: find out. But this seems to be a trend with
Speaker 1: a lot of issues related to the problem of tumble weeds,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States. I kept running across UH
Speaker 1: promising sounding scientific solutions UH from years past, solutions that
Speaker 1: in many cases may still be in development, but but
Speaker 1: but have not reached that point where someone is out
Speaker 1: there saying, yes, this is the thing we're actually doing
Speaker 1: tumble weeds, watch out because we're coming. Though some of
Speaker 1: these solutions do get more sci fi than the mangler. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: thank all, Right, well, I guess it's worth explaining it
Speaker 1: this point. What are tumbleweeds? Uh? And I think the
Speaker 1: most important point to say the beginning is that technically
Speaker 1: tumbleweed is not a single species of plant. Tumbleweed is
Speaker 1: a common morphological feature of a number of different species
Speaker 1: of plants spread out across different families. Though in the
Speaker 1: American context, there is one single species in the in
Speaker 1: the amaranth family that tumbleweed most often refers to, but
Speaker 1: it's by no means the only one, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that species in particular later. But the broader
Speaker 1: category of features of a tumbleweed is this. So a
Speaker 1: tumbleweed is the above ground structure of a plant which
Speaker 1: at maturity dries up and snaps away from the roots.
Speaker 1: Structure and then is blown around by the wind, scattering
Speaker 1: seeds as it goes. Yeah, it's sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: a detachable diaspore. Yeah. And and a diaspore is basically
Speaker 1: any seed and other structure that helps the seed spread.
Speaker 1: So die spore could include like say, a little parachute
Speaker 1: like thing that catches the wind, or it could include
Speaker 1: like a fruit to that you know that an animal
Speaker 1: would eat. It's the thing around the seed that helps
Speaker 1: the seed get where it's going. Yeah, but in this
Speaker 1: case it's pretty much the entire above ground part of
Speaker 1: the plant. Uh. And So there are variations between different species,
Speaker 1: but in most cases you can picture, for a tumbleweed,
Speaker 1: a bush like plant that becomes very brittle and dry
Speaker 1: and has a big tangle of different stem segments, and
Speaker 1: eventually it breaks off at the roots at roughly the
Speaker 1: place where the stem meets the ground, and then it
Speaker 1: rolls around on the planes, driven driven on the wind,
Speaker 1: like a giant inflatable ball. Now you might think, Okay,
Speaker 1: most plants don't break off at the place where they
Speaker 1: meet the ground and then get their bodies blown around,
Speaker 1: dead and dry by the wind, So why do tumble
Speaker 1: needs do that? Well, Actually, the answer is similar to
Speaker 1: the answer to the question why are fruits delicious? Uh.
Speaker 1: The the answer is it's for seed dispersal, meaning the
Speaker 1: transportation of seeds and thus the next generation of plants
Speaker 1: away from the parent and UH. A lot of plant
Speaker 1: species actually spend a great effort at seed dispersal, and
Speaker 1: there are a host of different strategies available. So, for example,
Speaker 1: there is animal dispersal. So you can think of the
Speaker 1: seeds of edible fruits. The fruit is tasty and dense
Speaker 1: and calories, so animals want to eat it. The animal
Speaker 1: will be attracted to the fruit, they'll nom nom, they'll
Speaker 1: swallow it, and then they will travel elsewhere on their
Speaker 1: their wings or their legs, and then they will defecate
Speaker 1: and deposit the seeds in a new home. But that's
Speaker 1: not the only method of animal dispersal. There are also
Speaker 1: the burrs that cling to the fur of mammals that
Speaker 1: that brush up against the parent plant. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if if you've got pets that burr
Speaker 1: magnets like my dog is. But you know, sometimes Charlie
Speaker 1: will will get into some bushes and then when he
Speaker 1: when he comes out, it's a problem. He has probably
Speaker 1: like you know, a thousand of these things stuck to him,
Speaker 1: and and there are a bunch more that there. For example,
Speaker 1: there is a whole class of of diaspores that are
Speaker 1: spread specifically by ants that you know that they have
Speaker 1: specific relationships with ants that will maybe bury them underground
Speaker 1: in a way that's preferable to to the plant. But
Speaker 1: there's also wind dispersal, So you can think of the
Speaker 1: seeds of dandelions. They contain a natural parachute, like a
Speaker 1: structure that catches the breeze and allows the seed to
Speaker 1: be picked up by the wind and blown to new lands.
Speaker 1: There's water dispersal. Coconuts are a great example here. They
Speaker 1: float on the water and allow currents to carry them
Speaker 1: to New German nation sites. There's gravity dispersal, that's what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. There's explosive dispersal. That one's fun. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: bursting pods and so forth. So there are a number
Speaker 1: of from methods UH, and there are some primary reasons
Speaker 1: that a plant would want to disperse its seeds to
Speaker 1: get the seeds away from the parent plant. One idea
Speaker 1: is that doing this UH reduces competition between the seed
Speaker 1: and the parent plant. And with other nearby adult plants. So,
Speaker 1: just like animals, plants need access to resources. And uh
Speaker 1: one example here would be sunlight. Plants need sunlight in
Speaker 1: order to power photosynthesis. But if they fall straight down
Speaker 1: off of the parent this could limit them right because
Speaker 1: they could be trying to grow in the shadow of
Speaker 1: the adult plant. And you can imagine other competitions for
Speaker 1: nutrients in the soil, for water and so forth. So
Speaker 1: one reason seeds might be dispersed is that the is
Speaker 1: that it allows the parent plant and the offspring to
Speaker 1: grow separately without competing with one another for access to
Speaker 1: the same resources. You know that that does make me
Speaker 1: think of the old thing the apple does and fall
Speaker 1: far from the tree, But that's saying really kind of
Speaker 1: misses the point because it's not the The apple is
Speaker 1: not supposed to just fall off the tree and remain there,
Speaker 1: and then the seeds are going to end up in
Speaker 1: the soil right there beside the parent tree. Like the
Speaker 1: idea is that this is animal dispersal, that those seeds
Speaker 1: are in this lovely, delicious apple that's going to be
Speaker 1: consumed or carried off by some other creature. That's a
Speaker 1: very good point. If the apple stays too close to
Speaker 1: the tree. That could be really bad for the young
Speaker 1: apple right or the young apple tree I guess um.
Speaker 1: But then there are other reasons. So that's just one
Speaker 1: possible motivation in the evolutionary sense. Other evolutionary motivations for
Speaker 1: seed dispersal would be saying, limiting bad things that can
Speaker 1: happen to young plants when they tend to be densely
Speaker 1: congregated around the parent plant. Uh So, these bad things
Speaker 1: could include contagion, could include the you know, the spreading
Speaker 1: of pathogens that would spread among densely congregated plant, or
Speaker 1: the harvesting of predators. So if say seeds are potentially
Speaker 1: edible and they all fall in one place right around
Speaker 1: the parent, this often results in say an animal that
Speaker 1: would eat those seeds. It would eat those young plants,
Speaker 1: the seedlings, uh coming, gobbling them all up at one
Speaker 1: time in one big buffet. But if they spread out
Speaker 1: all over the place, the risks of things like pathogens
Speaker 1: and predators are reduced. And then other motivations could be
Speaker 1: things like colonization of new areas without competition. So you
Speaker 1: might want a way to spread your your offspring plants
Speaker 1: to areas that don't really have any other plants in
Speaker 1: them right now, you know, just kind of some bare
Speaker 1: ground if it can be located. And in the cases
Speaker 1: of tumbleweeds in particular, that often is located because tumbleweeds
Speaker 1: can grow in areas that many other plants can't tolerate
Speaker 1: or haven't been able to take root in yet. And
Speaker 1: that's going to be key moving forward, So keep that
Speaker 1: in mind, right, Uh and uh. But another thing might
Speaker 1: be that see weeds would be dispersed so that they
Speaker 1: could target a specific germination spot to where the plant
Speaker 1: is likely to thrive. And you can interpret that in
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. For example, some animal dispersal would
Speaker 1: mean that the seed ends up either buried in the
Speaker 1: ground or maybe surrounded by dung which can protect it
Speaker 1: and provide other benefits. Or in other cases, uh, this
Speaker 1: might be methods of dispersal aimed at getting the seed
Speaker 1: to a certain kind of landscape or environment. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I guess one thing to keep in mind. It kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to the whole day about the idea
Speaker 1: about the apple falling far from the tree. It's not
Speaker 1: about where the apple initially falls, it's about where the
Speaker 1: seeds end up and with the tumble weed, it's actually
Speaker 1: quite similar. It's not about it's not about really where
Speaker 1: the tumble weed ultimately goes. It's about the seeds it
Speaker 1: drops along the way, that's right. So if you apply
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about to the tumbleweed in particular,
Speaker 1: how does it disperse its seeds? Generally, what what the
Speaker 1: detachable diaspore of a tumbleweed plant does is dry up
Speaker 1: with a bunch of seeds in it, and then it
Speaker 1: will be blown about by the wind, dropping seeds as
Speaker 1: it goes, because it will be kind of dry and brittle,
Speaker 1: so it bounces over the landscape, uh, sort of degrading
Speaker 1: and breaking apart as it as it blows around, and
Speaker 1: it will drop seeds intermittently, so all over the place
Speaker 1: you get. You get vast seed dispersal with this method,
Speaker 1: and thousands of seeds. Yeah, yeah, totally. And also if
Speaker 1: there are any seeds left in the tumbleweed when it
Speaker 1: reaches its final destination, whatever that is, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess there probably usually are some seeds still left in it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can it can try to germinate from wherever it
Speaker 1: comes to rest, especially if it finds a water source.
Speaker 1: If it happens to land in a place with moisture, yes,
Speaker 1: But one of the interesting things to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that, again, this is a plant that does extremely
Speaker 1: well and barren environments. Uh So, like an abandoned agricultural site.
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's that's pristine for the tumbleweed. You know,
Speaker 1: a vacant lot. Yes, it wants to get in there.
Speaker 1: But one of the things about say, tumbleweeds accumulating in
Speaker 1: a well irrigated yard is that I've I've read that
Speaker 1: those those tumbleweed seeds if they land there, and they're
Speaker 1: not going to really be able to compete with the
Speaker 1: grass that's growing there. So yeah, this is ultimately a
Speaker 1: plant that is at its best uh in the worst
Speaker 1: of environments, at least from uh you know, from from
Speaker 1: from a typical human perspective, in the worst of environments,
Speaker 1: or in environments that have for some reason been cleared
Speaker 1: of their natural vegetation, which often happens in the case
Speaker 1: of human development. Yeah, and I think it's worth this
Speaker 1: is something that I saw pointed out in a couple
Speaker 1: of different sources. It's easy to get to get in
Speaker 1: this mind because again, tumbleweeds and we'll discuss more about this.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're a pest there there and there there.
Speaker 1: It's it's a problem that people having to deal with.
Speaker 1: But you can't just look at the tumbleweed like a disease.
Speaker 1: You also have to look at the tumbleweed as a
Speaker 1: symptom of land degregation degradation. Yeah yeah, so uh, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the life cycle just a little bit here. So, um, so,
Speaker 1: what happens once that seed lands in just the right spot. Well,
Speaker 1: they don't need much water at all to start growing,
Speaker 1: and they have this kind of like screw like shape.
Speaker 1: They're they're kind of interesting to see the close ups
Speaker 1: of the seed. And then when they start growing, they
Speaker 1: start out looking like just blades of grass. They have
Speaker 1: kind of like a pinkish uh, like a white and
Speaker 1: pinkish um section towards the bottom. They almost look like
Speaker 1: it almost looks like some sort of weird onion grass
Speaker 1: or something. Oh yeah, yeah, Now I want to be
Speaker 1: clear at this point, we're talking about one species of
Speaker 1: tumbleweed in particular, the one that that Americans usually mean
Speaker 1: when they say tumbleweeds. So now we've narrowed it from
Speaker 1: the broader class of tumbleweed structures to the plant people
Speaker 1: are usually calling tumbleweed, which is known as Calli tregas
Speaker 1: or sell Sola tregas, or more commonly prickly Russian thistle.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the one we're talking about now. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I'll get into a fascinating little history lesson
Speaker 1: about that one in a bit. Yeah. And if you're
Speaker 1: a singing cowboy, this is the variety you're probably singing about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless you hear like a really uh like you're singing
Speaker 1: botanist cowboy, and then perhaps you have a more robust
Speaker 1: um uh you know, lyrical treatment of the whole situation.
Speaker 1: But yes, your your description is good. Yeah. So, like
Speaker 1: usually white and pink lower stem areas branching out into
Speaker 1: green grass like structures above and in in this young form,
Speaker 1: you know, this plant doesn't look quite so quite so threatening.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not thorny yet, it's not dry and
Speaker 1: brittle yet. And uh and according to the way it looks,
Speaker 1: in fact, that this this young form can be eaten
Speaker 1: by some animals. Yeah, and it it should be noted
Speaker 1: that the initial leaves here are long, but then these
Speaker 1: spring leaves eventually fall off and they're replaced by shorter leaves.
Speaker 1: Each flower contains a fruit that develops into a single seed.
Speaker 1: But then in the late fall, and and again we're
Speaker 1: just talking more or less about one variety, you see
Speaker 1: some some differences depending on the variety of tumbleweed that
Speaker 1: you're you're looking at the different species. But during the
Speaker 1: late fall, they begin to dry out and die, and
Speaker 1: the wind eventually breaks the dead tumbleweed free of its roots.
Speaker 1: And as as described in that that PBS source wee
Speaker 1: we referenced earlier, it's a clean break. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing you could compare to like a
Speaker 1: lizard shedding its tail due to a microscopic layer of
Speaker 1: cells at the base of the plant called the abscission layer.
Speaker 1: Uh so this allows it to just snap off. So
Speaker 1: the part of the stem that was made to snap clean,
Speaker 1: it's like the part of the lizard's tail that can
Speaker 1: that can shake off for autautomy. Yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: it's you would be forgiven if you just you know,
Speaker 1: casually thought, well, you know, it's it's a dry place
Speaker 1: and these bushes they just get so dry and dead,
Speaker 1: and then the gets so windy here it just snaps
Speaker 1: the bushes off and they rolled around. Um, but no,
Speaker 1: it's it is that, but it is also a a
Speaker 1: species that has evolved to take advantage of of this
Speaker 1: environment and to snap off it just the right place
Speaker 1: and it just the right time. Now, I saw some
Speaker 1: wildly different numbers about how many seeds and individual tumbleweed
Speaker 1: plant can drop as it rolls around. I assume obviously
Speaker 1: this varies by species, but even just with reference to
Speaker 1: Calli tragus or the Russian thistle, I saw people mentioning that,
Speaker 1: you know, one can drop a few thousand seeds, like
Speaker 1: maybe two thousand or twenty hundred, and then I saw
Speaker 1: estimates of like hundreds of thousands, So I really don't
Speaker 1: know which one is more at the correct end there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw tens of thousands. Um. I guess the tacome
Speaker 1: here is that we need to think of it again,
Speaker 1: not as like a single seed, but a depositor of many,
Speaker 1: many seeds. It's not about where the where it goes.
Speaker 1: It's about the seeds it drops along the way, as
Speaker 1: it tumbles, as it bounds across the landscape, as it
Speaker 1: weaves in and out of traffic and collides with semi trucks. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna spread out the seeds across the way,
Speaker 1: and and all the ones that land in just the
Speaker 1: right spot are going to have a shot at growing
Speaker 1: into plant, into adult plants themselves. It's one of those
Speaker 1: evolutionary marvels, which is in fact neither of these things,
Speaker 1: but kind of strikes you somehow as stupid and genius
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, and I think that's that
Speaker 1: again kind of cuts to the reason that tumbleweeds can
Speaker 1: be both frightening and impressive in person, but also innately comical.
Speaker 1: There's just something kind of ridunculous about this large bush
Speaker 1: bumbling and bouncing across the landscape. So I was curious
Speaker 1: about the you know, the physics of of this thing.
Speaker 1: I was like, and my and my wife even brought
Speaker 1: this up, just like, surely somebody's looked at the physics
Speaker 1: of this. So I was looking around and I found
Speaker 1: a wonderful book by Ralph D. Laurens, a planetary scientist
Speaker 1: and engineer at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. It's
Speaker 1: titled Spinning Flight Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras and Skipping Stones,
Speaker 1: And uh, there's a there's only a brief part of
Speaker 1: the book that really gets into tumbleweeds um and ultimately
Speaker 1: he ends up talking more about tumbleweed rover designs, which
Speaker 1: I'll touch on briefly in a minute. But uh, first
Speaker 1: I want to read this quote from the book by Lorenz. Quote.
Speaker 1: It is worth noting that the center of mass of
Speaker 1: a tumbleweed is generally offset from the geometric center. To
Speaker 1: what extent this is an inevitable consequence of the dendritic
Speaker 1: architecture of a plant, in that the branches must converge
Speaker 1: towards an apex which is linked to the roots system
Speaker 1: is unclear. It may be that there are dispersal performance
Speaker 1: advantages in such a departure from spherical symmetry. Tumbling bouncing
Speaker 1: rather than rolling, may enhance the shedding of seeds from
Speaker 1: the plant. That totally makes sense to me. So if
Speaker 1: it were a more perfectly round dry that were to
Speaker 1: roll away, it might roll better, but it also might shake. Uh,
Speaker 1: it might shake seeds loose in a less even way.
Speaker 1: But by having a kind of oblong or uneven structure,
Speaker 1: it's always kind of bouncing while it rolls, and with
Speaker 1: every impact as it bounces it can have a greater
Speaker 1: chance of shaking some of those seeds loose. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And he also points out that that the tumbleweed is
Speaker 1: naturally porous, so when we look at the air flow,
Speaker 1: the air flowing not only on and around it and
Speaker 1: against it, but also through it. Um. And he discusses
Speaker 1: he discusses most of this in connection again to the
Speaker 1: tumbleweed rover designs. These are various UH engineering approaches to
Speaker 1: creating some sort of a you know, a rover or
Speaker 1: probe that will work on the UH. Generally we're talking
Speaker 1: about the surface of another planet or another planetary body
Speaker 1: of some sort, or a moon or or something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mars is often a target here because again we have
Speaker 1: to remember there is wind on Mars and UH and
Speaker 1: if we could take advantage of that, uh, that would
Speaker 1: be a way to to move a rover across the landscape. UM.
Speaker 1: So you have various takes on this that are you know,
Speaker 1: and some are inflatable, some are non inflatable, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: roughly spherical designs to allow a rover to roll more
Speaker 1: or less like a tumbleweed. UM. But it sounds like
Speaker 1: the you know, while this is a promising area of study.
Speaker 1: The tumbleweed rover nut remains too, you know, remains to
Speaker 1: be fully cracked. But a lot of the science around
Speaker 1: it um I thought was interesting because it kind of
Speaker 1: helps illustrate what really works about the tumbleweed, the plant
Speaker 1: as a as an as an evolved solution and as
Speaker 1: an as as an evolved approach to the landscape, and
Speaker 1: what wouldn't work for a probe or a vehicle. So
Speaker 1: some of the designs do tend towards non smooth surfaces
Speaker 1: like the real tumble weed, and there have even been
Speaker 1: some experiments with oblong shapes, but these produced bouncing to
Speaker 1: acquired kinetic energy, something Lauren's rights is quote not recommended
Speaker 1: for an attractive vehicle design, and I think that's quite
Speaker 1: telling again because with it, with these tumbleweed rover designs,
Speaker 1: we are trying to solve a human vehicle problem, how
Speaker 1: to move a thing from one place to another and
Speaker 1: potentially to other locations, and to control the movement as well.
Speaker 1: The tumbleweed plant, on the other hand, is not trying
Speaker 1: to arrive at a destination. It's again all about the
Speaker 1: journey and that it and it's going to drop its
Speaker 1: various seeds along the way and bouncing far from being
Speaker 1: a danger to sensitive cargo and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sensors and whatnot. Uh, this can help free the seeds
Speaker 1: that need to be dropped and um, you know, and
Speaker 1: again naturally, tumbleweed plants are not perfect spheres. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're vaguely spherical and are I guess more bush shaped
Speaker 1: than anything, um as opposed to like, you know, ball shape.
Speaker 1: They're more shaped like a turkey than they are shaped
Speaker 1: like a beach ball. If if a turkey were likely
Speaker 1: to be like one to two meters in width and
Speaker 1: was like getting light enough to be pushed around in
Speaker 1: the wind. Yeah, they're they're really it's it's really remarkable.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I think it's time to talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the history of the tumbleweed. And one of
Speaker 1: the strangest facts about the tumbleweed, this icon of the
Speaker 1: American West, is that it is not actually native to
Speaker 1: North America. It's a fairly late arrival. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of the most common plants categorized as a tumbleweed in
Speaker 1: the United States today is the one we focused on
Speaker 1: a good bit already. Uh, known sometimes as callie tregas
Speaker 1: or previously known as Salsula tregas. The common name again
Speaker 1: is prickly Russian thistle. The name gives it away a
Speaker 1: bit where it actually comes from. This is a species
Speaker 1: originating in the steps of Eastern Europe and Western Asia,
Speaker 1: probably around the area of Ukraine. And I found a
Speaker 1: very interesting description of tumbleweeds in an eight teen fifty
Speaker 1: two botanical reference book by an English surgeon and botanist
Speaker 1: named Arthur Henfrey. It's called The Vegetation of Europe Its
Speaker 1: Conditions and Causes, published by Javan Vorst in eighteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: And uh, he gets to talking about tumbleweeds in the
Speaker 1: section of the book where he's cataloging the plant life
Speaker 1: of the Russian step. So again you have to imagine
Speaker 1: that at the time this was written in the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: there was probably no trace of this type of tumbleweed
Speaker 1: in the United States. But here's what Hinfrey says. In
Speaker 1: these regions, the wormwoods and thistles grow to a size
Speaker 1: unknown in the west of Europe. It is said that
Speaker 1: the thistle bush found where these abound is tall enough
Speaker 1: to hide a cossack horseman. The natives call all these
Speaker 1: rank weeds useless for past year Burian, and with the
Speaker 1: dry dung of the flocks, this constitutes all the fuel
Speaker 1: they possess. Oh and I should note, by the way,
Speaker 1: that while he keeps saying thistle, because that is the
Speaker 1: common name and what they were classifying at is back then,
Speaker 1: I think technically in the in the modern botanical sense,
Speaker 1: the tumbleweeds were referring to are not true thistles. They're
Speaker 1: not thistles, but that's what they're called here. So Hanfrey
Speaker 1: goes on. One curious plant of the thistle tribe has
Speaker 1: attracted the notice of most travelers, the wind, which, as
Speaker 1: it is called by the German colonists, or leap the field,
Speaker 1: as the Russian name may be translated. It forms a
Speaker 1: large globular mass of light, wiry branches interlaced together, and
Speaker 1: in autumn decays off at the route, the upper part
Speaker 1: drying up. It is then at the mercy of the
Speaker 1: autumn blast, and it is said that thousands of them
Speaker 1: may sometimes be seen coursing over the plane, rolling, dancing,
Speaker 1: and leaping over the slight inequalities, often looking at a
Speaker 1: distance like a troop of wild horses. It is not
Speaker 1: uncommon for twenty or thirty to be come entangled into
Speaker 1: a mass and then roll away, as Mr Cole says,
Speaker 1: quote like a huge giant in his seven League boots.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, yeah, this is this is exactly what
Speaker 1: I was saying on the highway a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you would see two that were I saw
Speaker 1: at one point two of them that were bound together.
Speaker 1: And this monstrosity was what jumped in front of a semitruck. Wow.
Speaker 1: I kind of wish I had seen that. But I
Speaker 1: gotta finish the last thing he says, because he describes
Speaker 1: the demise of this uh, this, this giant in the
Speaker 1: seven League boots uh quote, thousands of them are annually
Speaker 1: blown into the Black Sea and here, once in contact
Speaker 1: with water, in an instant, lose the fantastic grace belonging
Speaker 1: to their dry, unsubstantial texture. They are like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: it is like a witch like melting in the water
Speaker 1: because the power, it's so good, the wind, which that
Speaker 1: I've been captivated by that ever since I read it.
Speaker 1: These things are are wind witches. Um. But so okay,
Speaker 1: this is describing something in like the what they're calling
Speaker 1: the Russian Step, probably the area around the Black Sea,
Speaker 1: the Black Sea basin, or probably around Ukraine. So how
Speaker 1: does this type of plant end up in the United States. Well,
Speaker 1: beginning in the later decades of the nineteenth century, reports
Speaker 1: of a similar plant. I can't be sure they're talking
Speaker 1: about exactly the same species, but it seems likely to me, uh,
Speaker 1: they're They're at least definitely talking about the same type
Speaker 1: of plants, some kind of tumble weed. UM. Reports of
Speaker 1: a similar type of plants start pouring in from places
Speaker 1: in the Great Plains of North America, places like South Dakota,
Speaker 1: UM and Uh. It's hard to know exactly when they
Speaker 1: showed up, but a commonly reported claim put forward in
Speaker 1: a source I'm going to mention in a minute here
Speaker 1: is that they arrived in the United States around the
Speaker 1: year eighteen seventy or sometime in the early eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: possibly in shipments of flax seed contaminated with these Russian
Speaker 1: setle seeds UM. A commonly given date is eighteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to read reports from the early decades
Speaker 1: of their proliferation on the continent. By the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: invasive Russian thistle had become such a problem that the
Speaker 1: U S Department of Agriculture Botany Division issued a farmer's
Speaker 1: bulletin on the subject, authored by someone named L. H. Dewey.
Speaker 1: The l H stands for Lister Hoaxe Dewey, So you
Speaker 1: can actually look up a PDF of this yourself online.
Speaker 1: It's called the Russian Thistle and other Troublesome Weeds in
Speaker 1: the Wheat region of Minnesota and North and South Dakota.
Speaker 1: This document is actually more interesting and fund to read
Speaker 1: than you might expect for a farmer's bulletin. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so there's a number of tidbits I want to discuss
Speaker 1: from it, but first of all, I just want to
Speaker 1: read directly from it, as it is discussing the difficulty
Speaker 1: that farmers in the planes were facing due to the
Speaker 1: proliferation of tumbleweeds, probably from from Russian thistle. So Dewey writes,
Speaker 1: some of its special characteristics render this thistle much more
Speaker 1: troublesome than other weeds. Again, it's not actually a thistle.
Speaker 1: It is armed with spines quite as sharp and much
Speaker 1: stronger than those of common thistles. Because of these, it
Speaker 1: is difficult to drive horses through a field where the
Speaker 1: plants are abundant. In some sections, the farmers find it
Speaker 1: necessary to bind leathers about the horses legs while at work.
Speaker 1: Horses running in the pasture are often injured by having
Speaker 1: the skin on their legs badly lacerated. The spines breaking
Speaker 1: off under the skin cause festering sores. These sores are
Speaker 1: caused by the irritation, however, not by any poisonous property,
Speaker 1: as is frequently supposed. Hunters find difficulty in getting their
Speaker 1: dogs to work well for prairie chickens and the stubble,
Speaker 1: and the dogs are sometimes injured by the sharp spines.
Speaker 1: Thrashers find it almost impossible to get gloves thick enough
Speaker 1: to keep the spines out of their fingers, yet thin
Speaker 1: enough to work with. Oh, and then he talks about
Speaker 1: how these tumble it's can be a fire hazard. Of course,
Speaker 1: so he says, the Russian thistle is the worst rolling
Speaker 1: tumbleweed on the prairie, and in time of prairie fires,
Speaker 1: is easily blown across a firebreak of any width, carrying
Speaker 1: fire to stacks and buildings. Yeah, so, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the thing. Not only can they potentially be a fire
Speaker 1: hazard once they arrive at sort of a termination point,
Speaker 1: you know, when they're stuck against the fence or a house,
Speaker 1: but they can be on fire and be in motion.
Speaker 1: And uh and probably one of the more outrageous examples
Speaker 1: of this UM was making the rounds on the internet
Speaker 1: I think back in uh and it took place at
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty acre um prescribed burn at the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. And if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen this footage, look it up. I think it was
Speaker 1: making the rounds, especially on like BuzzFeed news and stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: But what you see is you see firefighters out there,
Speaker 1: you know, engaging in this um, you know, intentional burn
Speaker 1: of the of landscape there, and a dust devil kicks up,
Speaker 1: so you know, like a small vortex. And what does
Speaker 1: it do. It starts pulling tumbleweeds up into it. And
Speaker 1: uh and and this is I've seen footage of this
Speaker 1: occurring um with tumbleweeds elsewhere, except in this case the
Speaker 1: tumbleweeds are also on fire, so it is essentially a
Speaker 1: dust devil of flaming tumbleweeds. Yeah, it's like it looks
Speaker 1: like a tornado made out of tumbleweeds that are on fire. Right,
Speaker 1: it seems I mean it just sounds like a shark
Speaker 1: Nado sort of a situation. But no, it exists. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would seems like the main characteristics that are the
Speaker 1: problem here that tumbleweeds are so they're brittle, you know,
Speaker 1: fuel their their woods, so they're they're highly flammable, and
Speaker 1: they're very low density, so they can easily be moved around.
Speaker 1: And of course when there is fire, that creates drafts
Speaker 1: of air that that suck and blow things in different
Speaker 1: directions on its own. Uh So, yeah, tumbleweeds plus fire
Speaker 1: just seems like a nightmare to try to con troll. Now, naturally,
Speaker 1: one thing you would do to prevent fire from spreading,
Speaker 1: say in a prairie region, as you would have what
Speaker 1: are known as fire breaks. You would have you know,
Speaker 1: like ditches or areas of cleared land where there's no fuel.
Speaker 1: You know. So it's just like, if there is a fire,
Speaker 1: it's going to be stopped here because there's no fuel
Speaker 1: for it to spread across. But if you have tumbleweeds,
Speaker 1: first of all, they're they're they're likely to gather in
Speaker 1: fire breaks anyway, because that's the kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they will fall, they will settle their seeds in cleared
Speaker 1: land and grow grow there, so they can grow in
Speaker 1: fire breaks. When they're tumbling, they'll probably get stuck in
Speaker 1: fire breaks and pile up there. And uh and even
Speaker 1: if there's nothing in the fire break, if there's tumble
Speaker 1: if there are tumbleweeds burning on one side, they can
Speaker 1: easily leap over the break and then just spread it
Speaker 1: to the other side. You know, when I first encountered this,
Speaker 1: I also was thinking, Okay, maybe this is just a
Speaker 1: rare thing though, a flaming tumbleweed. I mean, just because
Speaker 1: it's on BuzzFeed News doesn't mean it's an accurate representation
Speaker 1: of reality. Um. But then I was looking around at
Speaker 1: some various folkloric references to tumble weeds, most of which
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say for part two. But there is this
Speaker 1: one bit from a folkloreist by the name of Thomas
Speaker 1: Edward Cheney who lived nineteen o one through who specialized
Speaker 1: in Mormon folklore and folklore of the bad Lands, and
Speaker 1: he wrote this in nineteen fifty nine in Scandinavian Immigrants
Speaker 1: Stories quote, A story glows like a tumbleweed on fire.
Speaker 1: As it passes on it may die after a brief
Speaker 1: and flashy existence, or it may be retained in the
Speaker 1: mind of a jokester until he dies and leaves his
Speaker 1: legacy to members of his family. They in turn recall
Speaker 1: sporadically the stories which particularly resemble their experiences. Many such
Speaker 1: stories die without the folkloreist or anyone else getting them
Speaker 1: into the written language. Now, that's just a good quote
Speaker 1: about just sort of the nature of storytelling. And I
Speaker 1: just kind of like what he's actually trying to relate there.
Speaker 1: But I also love that, like that that here is
Speaker 1: the flaming tumbleweed as a as a metaphor to explain that,
Speaker 1: and clearly like one that's not so novel as to
Speaker 1: be foreign. I guess two people of of of this
Speaker 1: part of the country. Like, he doesn't have to stop
Speaker 1: and say, let me tell you a story about a
Speaker 1: tumbleweed that once caught on fire, and I'm gonna use
Speaker 1: that to make my point. No, like the tumbleweed on
Speaker 1: fire seems to be just, you know, more or less
Speaker 1: off the shelf, even if it feels a little novel
Speaker 1: to many of us. But I like that metaphor. Actually
Speaker 1: it has both, uh in terms of oral storytelling, it
Speaker 1: has both its strengthened its fragility there because a tumblewheat
Speaker 1: on fire will burn up pretty quickly, and so it's
Speaker 1: it's very fleeting, it's very ephemeral. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it spreads super easily, so if it
Speaker 1: if it reaches another fuel source there it goes Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: thank thank But anyway, so in this document, this Department
Speaker 1: of Agriculture document from the eighteen nineties, L. H. Dewey
Speaker 1: goes on to talk about some of the same kind
Speaker 1: of problems we've already discussed in the modern age. You
Speaker 1: know that they will pile up against buildings, that they
Speaker 1: will pile up against fences, that they will will choke fields,
Speaker 1: that they will even if you kind of mulch them down. Uh.
Speaker 1: That they may do some good in in nourishing the land,
Speaker 1: but just that they're hard to deal with. When they're
Speaker 1: in their bulky form, they just get stuck in all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff and and cause these huge problems. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was another very interesting note I came across in this.
Speaker 1: There was more just to kind of uh something mentioned
Speaker 1: in passing in this document, but I thought it was
Speaker 1: sociologically interesting. So in discussing where Russian thistle comes from.
Speaker 1: Dewey says, all the evidence points to the idea that
Speaker 1: it was imported in contaminated shipments of flax seeds that
Speaker 1: were received in in the States around eighteen seventy three
Speaker 1: or in the early eighteen seventies. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to say, quote, there is evidently no foundation whatever
Speaker 1: for the theory which is too often related as a
Speaker 1: fact that it was first son in South Dakota by immigrants,
Speaker 1: either for forage or to inflict an injury on an enemy.
Speaker 1: So at least as early as the eighteen nineties, people
Speaker 1: were spreading a completely baseless rumor that this invasive plant
Speaker 1: was due to immigrants who had sowed the weed on purpose,
Speaker 1: possibly even with the intent to cause harm. Very much
Speaker 1: uh mo on the Simpsons immigrants, I knew it was them.
Speaker 1: But then later Dewey is talking about how quickly it
Speaker 1: He's trying to document how quickly the Russian thistle spread.
Speaker 1: Uh He says, quote, in many localities where a few
Speaker 1: plants were first seen four or five years ago, every
Speaker 1: spot of land where the sod has been broken is
Speaker 1: now occupied on every badger burrow and over fed spot
Speaker 1: in the prairie, on every roadside, railroad, embankment, firebreak, and
Speaker 1: neglected garden. On every field of early plowed land or
Speaker 1: stubble may be seen a patch of thistles. Again, not thistles.
Speaker 1: These are the tumble weeds. Uh. The seeds are not
Speaker 1: here and there as with eastern weeds, but they are everywhere.
Speaker 1: The few plants introduced four or five years ago have
Speaker 1: seeded the land for miles in every direction. Um. And
Speaker 1: then the last thing in the document is a section
Speaker 1: I actually found somewhat hilarious where he issues recommendations that
Speaker 1: are they're like pure just like vilification propaganda. I mean,
Speaker 1: not like obviously you know, these tumbleweeds can be a
Speaker 1: huge problem, and I'm not saying like I would just
Speaker 1: ignore them, but he like recommends that every school house
Speaker 1: in America should have a Russian thistle in the school
Speaker 1: house so that the pupils may become familiar with it
Speaker 1: quote and teach them to kill it wherever they find it,
Speaker 1: as they would kill a rattlesnake. Oh my goodness, I
Speaker 1: really feel for for many of us that, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't grow up in tumble weed country or haven't
Speaker 1: been visiting tumbleweed country during the times that they're on
Speaker 1: the move, like this is just kind of a uh,
Speaker 1: this this great adversary that's been there the whole time
Speaker 1: and we and I feel like I didn't really recognize
Speaker 1: it until just now. Well I think it is technically
Speaker 1: now in all forty eight contiguous US states, so it's everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, it is in Georgia, the state where we,
Speaker 1: uh we record this, But I do not recall ever
Speaker 1: having seen it or you know, identified it as such
Speaker 1: while I was here. I certainly have not had that
Speaker 1: experience of you know, the herds of of them moving
Speaker 1: across the highways, though I can only imagine how Georgia
Speaker 1: drivers would would would respond to that. We don't take
Speaker 1: kindly to stuff invading our highways. Now, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to mention a few other interesting facts that came across
Speaker 1: in another article. I was trying to look for a
Speaker 1: a more recent article about the spread of the different
Speaker 1: tumbleweed species, especially ruscent Russian thistle and related species in
Speaker 1: the US. So there was one I read from eighteen
Speaker 1: in the UC Boulder, Colorado Arts and Sciences magazine by
Speaker 1: you See Boulder professor of evolutionary biology and ecology named
Speaker 1: Jeff Mitton and Mitton covers some of the same ground
Speaker 1: we've already talked about that, for example, that tumbleweed is
Speaker 1: a is a structure. It is a type of strategy
Speaker 1: for reproduction that is employed by many plants, but that
Speaker 1: in the American context, most of the time when people
Speaker 1: see a tumble weed or talk about a tumble weed,
Speaker 1: they're usually talking about this Russian thistle species Salsula tregas
Speaker 1: or Callie tregas and uh. He says interestingly that genomic
Speaker 1: analysis in California has revealed that the tregas, the main species,
Speaker 1: was introduced to the US multiple times, at least twice
Speaker 1: from different places, so there were multiple introduction events, and
Speaker 1: he emphasizes against something that that has come out from
Speaker 1: multiple sources. We've looked at that tumbleweeds became especially common
Speaker 1: as they took hold in otherwise barren areas or in
Speaker 1: quote over graized sites, so abandoned farmlands or or overused
Speaker 1: ranch lands could be especially good places for UH for
Speaker 1: for these things to take root. They do better in
Speaker 1: cleared land where they can scatter freely, where their seeds
Speaker 1: don't have to compete with native grasses and shrubs. So
Speaker 1: it seems like one way to have a place resist
Speaker 1: colonization by the by the tumbleweeds is just to have
Speaker 1: plenty of natural native vegetation covering the land. One last
Speaker 1: thing I want to mention that that Mitten brings up
Speaker 1: in this article is that, uh, you know, sometimes discussion
Speaker 1: of of aggressively spreading non native species of plants can
Speaker 1: I don't know, it caused people to think of a
Speaker 1: plant as being wholly without use or merit in any
Speaker 1: you know, it can provide no nourishment to anything at all.
Speaker 1: And while tumbleweeds can certainly be a big problem for
Speaker 1: for humans and other life forms, Mitten points out that
Speaker 1: some animals can eat the sprouts of of these tumbleweed
Speaker 1: plants and and can get nourishment for them, especially when
Speaker 1: they're young and green, but he says that herbivores do
Speaker 1: tend to avoid them once they have reached their their
Speaker 1: thorny brittle adult state. Though he points out one interesting
Speaker 1: historical fact about their use as nutrition in in American history.
Speaker 1: He says that tumbleweeds quote were one of the last
Speaker 1: plants growing during the dust Bowl nineteen thirty to nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, when many farmers and ranchers were unable to
Speaker 1: keep anything growing to feed cows and horses. Russian thistle
Speaker 1: hay is credited with saving the beef cattle industry when
Speaker 1: other sources of hay disappeared. So this is a species
Speaker 1: of plant that that plays rough, but when when nobody
Speaker 1: else can hack it, it is still there and you know,
Speaker 1: in its young form it it can be eaten. Who
Speaker 1: may not be the best food source in the world,
Speaker 1: but but the bovines can ingest. Anyway, I think that'll
Speaker 1: have to do it for part one of our series
Speaker 1: on the Wind, which the tumbleweed. But we've got a
Speaker 1: lot more interesting stuff to talk about in part two.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we've got some some crazy tumbleweed variants that
Speaker 1: may interest you. We've got we've got we've got a
Speaker 1: few Mongolian riddles we're gonna share. Uh So, there should
Speaker 1: be a lot of a lot of interesting territory to cover,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna go ahead and let this particular tumbleweed
Speaker 1: episode snap off at the roots and begin tumbling its
Speaker 1: way to listeners out there. Obviously, even yeah, with creativity
Speaker 1: in the metaphoric sense. Right Um, now, I'm sure we
Speaker 1: have a number of listeners out there who have a
Speaker 1: lot more experience direct experience with tumbleweeds, and yes, we
Speaker 1: would love for you to share your experiences with us, uh,
Speaker 1: encountering tumbleweeds, rolling across the highways and into your house
Speaker 1: and so forth. Um let us know you know how
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, and we'll share that
Speaker 1: information here in just a second. But hey, in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to additional episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find them in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcasts. Feed Core episodes
Speaker 1: published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do an artifact or a monster fact episode.
Speaker 1: On Fridays, we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious matters and just to focus
Speaker 1: in on a strange film and discuss a strange film.
Speaker 1: Um oh, I should also point out that I was
Speaker 1: just looking to to revamp some of our you know,
Speaker 1: place holders, social media presences, and our Instagram account has
Speaker 1: been locked up for over a year. Nobody knows how
Speaker 1: to get into it. It's a ghost house. So we
Speaker 1: have a new Instagram. If you're into Instagram and you
Speaker 1: want to follow us, you can follow us at st
Speaker 1: b y e M Podcast. That's our handle there. But
Speaker 1: I should also point out that we also have a
Speaker 1: separate Instagram for Weird House Cinema, and that one is
Speaker 1: just Weird House Cinema. That's the that's the Instagram handle,
Speaker 1: and uh, that one I've actually updated, so it has
Speaker 1: like a still from every episode of Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: that we've done thus far. So that's a fun way
Speaker 1: if you just want to follow Weird House Cinema stuff.
Speaker 1: And I'll probably be updating that because because every now
Speaker 1: and then, when I'm watching a movie for a Weird House,
Speaker 1: I'll have to like take a picture of something on
Speaker 1: the on the on the TV screen, um, and this
Speaker 1: might be a place where I would share that. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm liable to actually use that account for
Speaker 1: things beyond just the mentioning of new episodes. This is
Speaker 1: this is phone camera photo of a TV screen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's has more heart. Yeah. I think the first one
Speaker 1: the post I did on that Instagram account was it
Speaker 1: was just a picture I took off the screen during
Speaker 1: Hands of Steel where it has the text at the
Speaker 1: end that pops up and says it was a day
Speaker 1: in our near future the era of the cyboid had
Speaker 1: begun Arizona movie, so it ties in to what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here today. Not unrelated to tumbleweeds. There you go,
Speaker 1: drifting along with the tumbling cyborg. Okay, anyway, huge things.
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows.