My wife and I made a trip to visit her parents in western Kansas last weekend, and found the tumbleweeds to have taken over.
Tumbleweeds were introduced from Russia’s Ukraine when some farmers inadvertently brought them to South Dakota in 1886 along with seeds for flax. The plants break away from their roots in the autumn, and are driven by the wind as a light, rolling mass, scattering seed far and wide. The seeds are produced in large numbers and do not have a protective coating or food reserves for the coiled plant embryos. The deep, ineradicable taproot that remains in the ground survives to grow again the following season.
