GARDEN CITY, Kansas — A minor but significant character in old western movies: the tumbleweed. In the midst of the gunslinging, often a lonely tumbleweed will roll across the screen.
In the final showdown from the movie “Silverado,” two men square off with each other in an old western town. As they face each other calmly, tumbleweeds blow by behind them.
Today, if you drive across western Kansas on a windy day, you will often see not a lonely tumbleweed, but a swarm of them crossing the highway or congregating along a fence by the road.
In western Kansas, it comes with the territory. In fact, ask people in town and they will tell stories with annoyance or amazement of tumbleweeds blocking their driveways or stacked against their homes.
Ron Wilson is a film and media studies professor at the University of Kansas. He said the tumbleweed became especially popular and symbolic during the early Hollywood days.
“They became a part of the imagery of the frontier in early westerns, the visual imagery connected to the mythic West. They are easily readable as images by an audience,” Wilson said.
Wilson said that if you see a closeup of a tumbleweed, you are apt to think of an abandoned, isolated place from the past.
People in urban areas may be surprised by just how prominent this plant is on the frontier today.
But it wasn’t always like that. In fact, tumbleweeds are a relatively new phenomenon on the Plains where they have claimed a new home. They weren’t even established in the U.S. in the early days of the cowboy.
Path of the tumbleweed
Tumbleweeds are native to Russia and eastern Europe. In the 1870s, immigrants from that region were finding their way to the open land and skies of western Kansas and surrounding states.
They brought with them flaxseed and hard red winter wheat. That wheat later became Kansas’ claim to fame, and a major part of the state’s economy.
Those grains took well to Kansas prairie soil. But the crop seeds also came with a hitchhiker, seeds of the Russian thistle.
Vance Ehmke, a farmer out of Lane County, also runs a family-owned seed company.
“They should have got their wheat seed from a reputable seed dealer,” Ehmke joked.
The weeds that immigrants unknowingly brought sprout early spring and dry out in late fall. A layer of cells around the stem dies, allowing a gust of wind to break off the tumbleweed and carry it away.
This is actually the plant’s strategy. As it tumbles and tosses across flat western Kansas, upwards of 10,000 seeds shake out and sprout new tumbleweeds.
This creates more of a nuisance than a novelty, especially for farmers like Ehmke, and can even impact yields and their bottom line.
“One really good Russian thistle can remove 44 gallons of water, and that will definitely have an impact on the yield of following crops like corn or milo the next year,” Ehmke said.
When the weeds spread, a farmer's crops are then competing for the limited water.
They are so well adapted for the High Plains that they keep Kansas State University weed scientist Patrick Geier pretty busy.
“They thrive in limited water environments,” Geier said. “If we have an area where there's a blank patch or ground, these plants love it.”
Part of why they’re so common is that tumbleweeds were the first documented case of herbicide resistance in Kansas, making them harder for landowners to eradicate.
Geier was there for it in the beginning. His mentor, Dallas Peterson, was the one to document the resistance.
Farmers had approached Peterson back in 1975 explaining their troubles with tumbleweeds. After collecting samples, the tumbleweeds appeared to resist one of the prominent herbicides being used at the time, meaning the chemicals had little effect controlling or killing the plant.
Herbicides took off following World War II. After their development, farmers could grow more crops per acre and produce higher yields. For example, herbicides accounted for 20% of the increase in corn yields from 1964 through 1979.
But the popularity led to herbicide resistance. Because farmers relied on herbicides so heavily in the 1960s and 1970s, weeds like Russian thistle began to mutate to survive.
Today, Geier is helping farmers navigate those same weeds and challenges. He is seeing the use of some herbicides go down and more use of mechanical practices that crush weed seeds.
Tumbleweeds in town
It’s not just farmers that battle tumbleweeds. Local governments have to as well.
With tumbleweeds flying all over and stacking up, they can cause real fire hazards.
Kelly Kirk is the fire chief for Liberal, Kansas. He said the solution is to collect and burn them safely before they become an uncontrolled fire threat.
Kirk said tumbleweeds are plentiful dry fuel, posing a danger to fields and structures. He remembered one time he helped remove mountains of the weeds from around houses and yards.
“It literally inundated an entire neighborhood. We cleaned up that entire area and burned off all of those tumbleweeds over a period of probably a week,” Kirk said.
Some years when tumbleweeds get particularly bad, the city will loan out “burn dumpsters,” which are dumpsters attached to trailers specifically to deal with weeds.
Tumbleweeds can also be a big factor in wildfires. After a wet fall, tumbleweeds grow and spread. They dry out in time for the wildfire season in late winter and early spring.
Kole Johnson, from the National Weather Service in Dodge City, said the agency works with fire officials to monitor the buildup of fuel including dry weeds. And tumbleweeds not only burn but can help a fire spread.
“Tumbleweeds may ignite and then be blown elsewhere spreading the fire,” Johnson said.
But even though they have a serious impact on western Kansans, the tumbleweeds are still embraced culturally. They’re sometimes used as decorations, sold as small town souvenirs or considered part of the landscape.
And it hasn’t been all bad. Geier said despite all the hassles they cause, tumbleweeds have helped some native species.
“They make great habitats for some of our bird species. They produce a tremendous amount of feed for our wildlife. It's part of growing up on the Great Plains,” Geier said.
Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can email him at cmoore@hppr.org.
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