for various plants which form a globular bush which in late summer is broken off and rolled about by the wind a rolling weed.ġ887 Amer. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as the name in U.S. Tumbleweed is a weed that tumbles across the prairie in the wind. The awkward silence memorialized by Stack Exchange's tumbleweed badge is the emptiness of the page where the question has been posted but no one has answered it, commented on it, or voted on it for a full week. This is sometimes used for comic effect in locations where tumbleweeds are not expected, but the emptiness is obvious.Īs with the sound of crickets, tumbleweeds can also be shown to emphasize an awkward silence after a bad joke or a character otherwise making an absurd declaration, with the aforementioned sound of wind and the plant rolling past in the background. A common use is when characters encounter a long abandoned or dismal-looking place: a tumbleweed will be seen rolling past, often accompanied by the sound of a dry, hollow wind. It has come to represent locations that are desolate, dry, and often humorless, with few or no occupants. The tumbleweed's association with the Western film genre has led to a highly symbolic meaning in visual media. Wikipedia's general article on tumbleweeds ends with a discussion of the symbolism of the plant that seems relevant to the current discussion: Interesting tumbleweed fact: Although tumbleweeds of various plant families are common in parts of the United States (some of them native to North America), one of the largest and in some places most prevalent species west of the Mississippi River is not native to the New World rather, it is a Eurasian species also known as the Russian Thistle ( Kali tragus) and (perhaps most evocatively) as the "wind witch." So it is a sad and lonely feeling (according to the badge namers at Stack Exchange) when you ask a question and few people see it and no one responds to it. I'm just a lonesome tumbleweed/turning end over end./Once I pulled all my roots free/I became a slave to the wind,/a slave to the wind. Lord, I feel like rolling,/rolling along, so keep your big/wind blowing till all my natural/days are gone -/till my days are all gone. I feel like a broken wagon wheel/when I can't hop a slow-moving train/Think I know how a coyote feels/when he's howling just to/ease the pain, since he's been away. I feel like a lonesome tumbleweed/rolling across an open plain,/I feel like something nobody needs/I feel my life drifting away,/drifting away. West is captured by the song "Tumbleweed," by Douglas Van Arsdale (made famous by Joan Baez): There is a 1953 Western movie called Tumbleweedstarring Audie Murphy.The notion of the loneliness of the tumbleweed in the U.S.Tumbleweed has been glamorized as part of the landscape of the “Wild West,” and has shown up in movies and songs. The ball is fashioned nicely so that, as it rolls along, it doesn’t lose all its seeds in one bounce. They have an easy time traveling because of the abundance of wind and flat land where they live. The weed blows and tumbles around in order to spread these many seeds. At this point, it had formed into a nice sphere carrying around 250,000 seeds! A tumbleweed’s seeds are kind of weird because they don’t have a protective coating. Unlike most plants, this plant likes to move around! As its growing season comes to an end, the tumbleweed weakens and the stem breaks. In Russia in the 1800s, it was called the “Tartar Thistle,” because it would spread fires in the hot, dry climate and injure horses’ legs with its sharp leaves.They release chemicals that make the soil better for other plants.It is more efficient at making wood than any other plant.The tumbleweed is a survivor and can withstand harsh conditions… like cockroaches.It is native to Australia, but can now be found in Russia, Asia, America, Africa, and the Middle East.Anastatica hierochuntica / the Rose of Jericho.Cycloloma atriplicifolium / winged pigweed.There are several species of plants called “tumbleweed,” including the following: Tumbleweed comes in all shapes and sizes. It surprised me when I figured out that a tumbleweed is an actual plant- and a strange one at that! For the longest time, I thought a tumbleweed was just a loose mass of dead plants and dry material that just happened to stick together.
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