![]() ![]() to South Dakota to learn more about this weed, which had been causing problems amongst ranchers and quickly spreading, as National Geographic reported. Department of Agriculture botanist named Lyster Hoxie Dewey was sent from Washington, D.C. This irksome rogue hails from the steppes of central Asia, and likely stowed away in a batch of flaxseed from Russia, arriving in the mid-1870s to the charmingly named town of Scotland, South Dakota. It goes by the name of Russian thistle, or Salsola tragus. One type of tumbleweed, though, remains the most notorious-the plant you’ve probably seen in Westerns bouncing along the dusty ground. Gary Larson, a botanist at South Dakota State University, recalls that during his graduate study in North Dakota, he tracked a tumbleweed by the trail of seedlings it had scattered. Some of these plants can hold hundreds of thousands of seeds. Then they get carried off by the wind, scattering seeds as they go. Generally, these plants are bushy and round, and their stem breaks off at the ground in the fall or winter, often after a frost. The term “tumbleweed” can refer to any one of a variety of species, like Russian thistle and kochia. While the plants are best known from their appearances in Westerns and Americana of the region, and tend to symbolize an untamed landscape, they are in fact foreign invaders, and rely on human development to spread. #BOUNCING TUMBLEWEED GIF FULL#Tumbleweeds, like the San Joaquin Valley, are misunderstood and full of surprises. The remark not only showed that de León needs a bit of education on the Valley (where 4 million people live) but also cast light on an oft-overlooked plant. Kevin de León, the new leader of the California State Senate, recently caused a stir when he said that it would be a bad idea to begin building a proposed high-speed train in the San Joaquin Valley, in part because “ nobody lives out there in the tumbleweeds.” ![]()
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