Tumbleweeds are not only a prickly nuisance to snag your clothes and scratch your car, but these rolling balls of chaos can cause other problems. The Dangers of Tumbleweeds Photo Credit: Lisa Risager / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0Īre tumbleweeds dangerous? Yes. It has also reached parts of Southern Africa, Australia, and Central and South America. They extend from China to the majority of Europe and North Africa. Tumbleweed plants have spread across the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and southern Canada. “Spreading rapidly as it is over new territory and becoming more destructive in the region already infested, it threatens serious consequences unless prompt measures are taken to subdue it.” He reported that the weed posed an existential threat to farms. In 1894, the USDA dispatched botanist Lyster Hoxie Dewey to investigate. “Cattle will graze it when the plants are young (before the leaves get spiny).” Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service ( USDA ARS). “Since the plant did not appear in North America until the 1870s, Native Americans have had relatively little time to discover a use for it,” says Lincoln Smith, research entomologist at the U.S. Russian thistle also contains nitrates and soluble oxalates in levels that are poisonous to sheep. They had few predators and offered little to farmers as a viable crop. Tumbleweeds sprouted quickly when the early farmers planted the infected grain, thriving in cleared areas of land and surviving on very little water. One plant can spread approximately 250,000 seeds per winter.
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