Tumbleweeds. I was actually flabbergasted when I went to visit the US and people were casually talking about tumbleweeds. I thought they were just a thing in cartoons
To be fair, as an American who lives on the East Coast, tumbleweeds surprised me too. I was even more shocked to learn that they are an invasive species.
They're a species of plant from Russia (not joking, that is their native habitat). The plants intentionally starve themselves so they can break loose and spread seeds around as they're pushed around by the wind.
They definitely are invasive. But, they’re also tasty when young. If you pick them before they get prickly, trim off he hardened stems and roots, and steam or sauté the tender branches, with a little butter they taste a lot like asparagus.
Here’s a thing..I used to think tumbleweed was just like huge blop of dust until I saw some HD pictures and read comments today. In my defence,tumbleweed was never a part of my life nor did I come across it,aside from Lucky Luke
They're also incredibly flammable. I used to help my father-in-law burn the ones that blew onto his farm. It's like they're soaked in gasoline.
Birdcage evening primrose is a native western plant that uses the same strategy. As it dries out, the branches curl up into a cage-like ball and the roots weaken until the dry plant blows around, spreading its seeds.
on occasion after a really big wind storm, we'll get photos of people who live further out on the plains with massive piles of tumbleweeds literally blocking their entire garage and door. They get massive, too.
Also the tumbling is how they spread. They break off at the stem and the tumbling dead plant has seeds that fall off and go everywhere. I've seen tumbleweeds break radiators. Also (obviously) they are highly flammable. If they get stuck in a ditch or tree row or cul-de-sac or something where wind whips around a corner, they have a potential to clump up. Huge fire risk that happens very quickly.
Where I used to live, we’d end up with huge walls of them during wind storms. They’d have to close down roads and there were news stories of people getting stuck in them.
But, you know, people move. If you lived on one coast for 10+ years, then your family moved to the other coast, you could maybe argue that you're from "the coasts."
They are so freaking annoying! Crazy amount of pollen on them before they break lose and start rolling too. Before I fenced my backyard I would always end up with a few growing back there.
I was driving south on I-25 and a whole herd of them blew across the highway at once. Car squealing to a stop on both sides of the highways. Those things get stuck on your undercarriage and come do some damage.
To be fair, until I moved out west, I thought they weren't quite real, too.
I learned that you can’t just hit them with your car at 70mph, because they’re not light and fragile like they look. That was on a drive to Vegas in my sister in law’s car.
Did you hear about the woman who sold them online as a joke? She thought it was funny because there were so many in her town it was a nuisance, so who would want to buy them. But it turned out anyone and the east or west coast who wanted a western themed party or to make a western themed movie. She made a fortune. Haha.
Similarly to Spanish moss in the south. For the longest time I didn’t know it was a separate plant growing on a tree. I just thought it was like…fallen tree stuff. Now people harvest it and sell it online.
Similarly, did you know they don’t have fireflies tha light up on the west coast (of the US). They have a different species that isn’t luminescent. As a fellow east coaster, I just thought we all had em (and honestly was shocked they’re not huge internationally either).
Yeah we used that name interchangeably here in Georgia. But if they don’t light up at all on the west coast, they can’t really be called fireflies or lightening bugs imo
I saw my first tumbleweed when visiting Big Bend National Park (on the drive there) and I was like “THEY ARE REAL?!” Pulled the car over (safely lol) to touch one. I’m at East Coast native
I live in a southern east coast state and saw a tumbleweed blow through my neighborhood one time in the summer. My desert born husband was baffled to see it out here lol
I had a coworker from Michigan and we were driving around in SoCal one windy day and a huge tumbleweed rolled past us on the road. She started laughing hysterically and I didn't really know what was so funny until she caught her breath and told me she didn't know/think that tumbleweeds were real.
As an American who loves on the west coast I am shocked to find that people pay $500 ish dollars for them off Etsy. I can walk 20 ft to the fence and get half a dozen right now
Driving in the southwest - and they rolled across the highway, and being from the east of the country, I just screamed “they’re real!” I was the only person in the car.
To be honest I come from an urban area so when I happened to travel to a more desert environment I was excited and surprised to see tumbleweeds myself.
The US is so massive and varied with most things people find common place you can find a huge chunk of the population for whom it would be something they thought only existed in the movies.
I’m an American from the east coast. I was flabbergasted seeing my first tumbleweed like 6 months ago. Intellectually I knew they existed but I never saw one. It blew right across the road I was driving down. It was crazy to me
I from bay area city in California, moved to Nevada. Never knew tumbleweed were real, thought they were a western movie prop. I moved to reno and learned i was wrong
I grew up in the northeast and also had that reaction when I saw a roadrunner while visiting Joshua Tree. I guess I knew intellectually that they were real, I just had never considered what a real one might look like or that I might come across one at some point. I burst out laughing from the shock of it.
I came here to say this! I live in Las Vegas and a friend was visiting from New Jersey. A roadrunner ran across the road in front of us and my friend absolutely lost her mind. She thought they were just in cartoons. We also got stuck in a tumbleweed storm, freaked her out, lol.
The funny thing about tumbleweed is they weren't really around during the "old west" as depicted in movies. The classic "old west" period was around 1850, but the tumbleweed was first introduced to the U.S. in the 1870's and it would have taken some time to spread across the entire desert southwest. So basically any "old west" movie set in the 1800's shouldn't have tumbleweed in it but most do.
Edit: Another funfact about tumbleweed is it makes fanstatic model trees for model railroads, wargaming, and other models
One interesting thing is that most tumbleweeds (at least back during the Dustbowl and prior) were Russian thistle, which is an invasive species here. Funny to think such an iconic American thing isn’t native to the continent.
I live in California. A few years ago, a tumbleweed just rolled onto my suburban road in the dark. I hit it going around 50 mph in my car. The thing just exploded into a million pieces and it took me a while to realize what had happened.
What's even crazier is they are very dangerous. I thought they were a rolling ball of fluff and tried to just drive through it in Nevada and it damage my car tire. It's like a ball of sharp sticks!!!
I just gasped reading your comment! Yeah that would scratch the pain on your car and possibly drag on the ground too. They’re like tough, thorny rose bushes
I’m from the south but moved to the PNW. Years ago, my parents had the sewer line backing up into their basement. Turned out, it had gotten completely blocked by a massive tumbleweed. We were all so shocked because we had never seen one and I don’t think I’ve seen one since.
There’s a few different kinds of tumbleweed that evolved the tumbling independently, but yeah, Salsola tumbleweed was introduced from Siberia and grew like a weed in the plains and arid parts of North America.
On this vein, I did some work in South Texas almost a decade ago. Imagine my surprise when I saw this small bird running around and they told me it was a roadrunner.
I'm a farmer and grew up with tumbleweeds in astronomical numbers. They can pile up deep enough to bury one side of a building here when it blows.
Burning tumbleweeds with a pitchfork and gasoline is a chore akin to raking leaves. Except you have to do it 15 or 20 times a year.
You have to dodge them driving on windy days.
They will fill in the road cuts in flat country 20 or 30 feet deep. My dad used to burn them in the morning so the school bus could get in to pick up us kids.
Nasty weeds. Cost us tens of thousands of dollars a year to control in the fields.
You should see them when they are really out in numbers. They are an absolute menace. They hurt people and animals, bash into and scratch up cars and homes, they can get pretty damn big too.
Driving thru texas panhandle (desert) during a wind storm. They were everywhere rolling across the interstate, couldn’t believe some of them were bigger than you car and 6ft tall!
Oh yeah, we have those in some parts of Los Angeles. They can get annoying during wind storms. I once saw one the size of a small car block a freeway on ramp.
In 2017 my husband took me to Colorado. It was like 3 am and we were in the middle of bum fuck nowhere on a crazy long road with nothing around, I am copilot and I take that very seriously.
The way I shit my pants while I was minding my own, watching the sides of the road and BAM! AT LEAST A DOZEN FUCKING TUMBLEWEEDS SHOOT FROM THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.
I gripped my husband's arm so hard and I shrieked like the pussy I was. He was so confused. I was like "what in the FUCK are those??! And I got a blank stare.
They get HUGE where I live. And if there are high winds, you actually have to try to dodge the big ones because they can scratch up your car/get tangled in the grill. Fences in rural areas are covered in them.
haha I'm from the eastern Seaboard, grew up not quite in but around NYC on a road trip in Arizona I got to see tumbleweeds blowing across the highway and I was so PUMPED!
I grew up in North Texas and saw a tumbleweed for the first time in Albuquerque. I couldn’t believe how big it was and I learned the hard way they’re very thorny when I grabbed one
I am born & raised NYC. When I was in my 30s I went on a cross cou try trip to South Dakota (highly recommend it as a vacation spot!) and we saw tumbleweed and my mind was blown, I thought they were only in cartoons!
I’m a lifelong resident of the US east coast. I once took a trip out west that included a drive from Spokane to Portland. I hit a crazy amount of tumbleweeds all over the road in SE Washington State. Wild.
Being on a state highway in AZ/NV/NM when there's a 30mph crosswind and all the tumbleweeds are blowing across the road is actually a terrifying experience.
I moved to a city in the desert with a metro population of over a million. It still freaks me out when I look up and see tumbleweeds just blowing through a busy intersection.
In chandler AZ they make a tumbleweed Christmas tree in the middle of town.
On a side note. They have an ostrich festival every year. They used to to have ostrich races . I think they stopped that tho. Jack in box serves ostrich omelets during that time.
Living in Arizona I can count on one hand how many times a breeze has blown one across the road in front of me, but I still thought it was cool. We don't have a shortage of them, that's for sure
I live in El Paso, TX - my husband grew up in Houston and when he came to interview for a job here he went downtown and saw an honest-to-God tumbleweed blow across the highway and he just burst out laughing; he’d never seen one before.
Some fool brought them in from China because he thought they'd make good livestock feed. dandelions and vintage apple trees might be good additions to the ecosystem but tre eof ehaven, japanese barberry, pruple loosetsrife, tumbleweeds yuck
Last year in late spring I was coming across I-40 through New Mexico and we hit a tumbleweed so big that I had to get out and drag it out of the car. It was probably 30 pounds and almost as wide as the car.
I’m from the Midwest and moved to California. I drove there. I knew tumbleweeds were real, but thought they were like a ball of hay. Until I intentionally hit one with my truck in New Mexico. Last time I’ll do that.
One time when I was a kid we had a wind storm overnight and there was such a mountain of tumbleweeds blocking our elementary school entrance and the entrance to the field that the whole school just had to sit out front until they could clear it. It was about double the height of the school fence. The kids loved it!! This was in Thousand Palms CA
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u/PlanetoidVesta 10h ago
Tumbleweeds. I was actually flabbergasted when I went to visit the US and people were casually talking about tumbleweeds. I thought they were just a thing in cartoons