#718 Alien Western Seeder

So I was reading a book not long ago in which tumbleweeds figured prominently. You know tumbleweeds. Those strange uprooted remnants of bushes that blow across deserted landscapes in old western movies.
The very symbol of desolation.
The quintessential image of the old west.
Especially when it comes to old western ghost towns. Or even just a bad day for good live western towns, when the scared citizens have gone inside to hunker down till the big shoot out between the hardcase forces of evil and the hard-jawed faces of good is over. When you think tumbleweed, you think old west.
Unless that west is older than 1877.
Yep, 1877, because that’s when the Russian thistle first made its alien invasive way onto the Great Plains. The plant, also known as salsola, first showed up in Bon Homme, South Dakota, apparently stowed away in some flax seed from the Ukraine. South Dakota was too harsh for growing flax, but by 1900, tumbleweeds had rolled all the way to the pacific.
The reason it tumbles, in case you’re wondering like I once was before Wikipedia, is because it breaks off from its roots in the fall and catches the wind to go out for a little rock and rolling, in the process scattering its seeds hither and yon.
The similarity to a young cowpoke, breaking from the roots of his family and drifting across the west, scattering little cowboys from hell to breakfast, appears to be an unconscious tumbleweed analogy in many a western picture show.
It’s certainly an interesting seed dispersal method.
They say Tumbleweed seeds are edible but difficult to collect in quantity. They are actually related to the amaranth family, one of which supplies that exotic seed you see in multigrain breads.
Yum. Tumbleweed bread. Do you have any moist butter? Tumbleweed bread’s so dry, it’s already toast.
But it is kind of cool how international our iconic American westerns turned out to be with a good American actor and Italian director filmed in a bad part of Spain and the ugly Russian thistle rolling around for effect.
America, ya gotta love it.