Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #584

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
A Car-sized Tumbleweed Made Quite A Scene On A California Highway
By Vanessa Romo
A giant tumble- weed roughly the size of a Volkswagen bee- tle was spotted hurtling its way down a four-lane road in California this week.
The jaunty brown bundle of brush was captured on
video and posted on Tuesday on X, formerly known as Twitter, where it has gathered a number of fans who have com- pared it to a giant hairball, belly lint gone wild, and the critters from the eponymously named 1986 sci- fi horror movie.
The poster of the
video offered no information about the bouncing plant carcass, other than to say that it was "the mother of all tum- bleweeds." But that got us think- ing. Not just about cowboys and classic Western movies, but about where tumbleweeds come from and
their propensity for taking over roads and neigh- borhoods.
First off, tumble- weeds aren't one specific species of plant. They fall under an umbrel- la of noxious weeds that when dry, break off at the root, setting off on a seed- spreading expe-
dition.
One of the most common and most problematic for crops is the Russian thistle, or Kali tragus. It is believed to have hitched a ride from Ukraine to South Dakota in a shipment of flaxseed back in the 1870s, and it has plagued the country's dry, arid lands ever since.
In 2020, a swarm of tumbleweeds took over a stretch of Washington state highway that piled up to 30 feet high in some places. Cars and trucks were trapped for hours. Authorities dubbed it Tumblegeddon.
A couple of years later, about 100 homes in Victorville, California, were seemingly swal- lowed up by thousands of
prickly tumble- weeds that were strewn about by 50 mph winds.
In a similar inci- dent in 2014, a tumbleweed explosion knocked down fences, blocked highways and trapped people inside their homes in Colorado.
Experts say there is more tumble- weed tumult in our futures.
A 2019
study from the University of California, Riverside, found that a new species of gigan- tic tumbleweeds — Salsola
ryanii — that can grow up to 6 feet tall, grows more vigorously than others. They also say it's likely to expand its territo- ry as a result of climate change.
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