Tumbleweeds roll with the wind, setting off on a spontaneous journey

If you find yourself in the vast, sandy expanse of the American West, the sight before you is sure to leave you stunned: masses of spherical dried grass tumbling and leaping with the wind, as if a grand ball were underway. You have no idea what is happening, nor where they are headed. In fact, this is a common plant of the desert gobi -tumbleweed, commonly known as the "drifter."

Tumbleweedis a common plant of the Chenopodiaceae family, and the well-known sacsaoul tree is a relative of it. The tumbleweed's greatest trait is its tenacious will to survive, able to make a home anywhere. Once it lacks water, or when strong winds blow and the environment turns dry, it will not hesitate to pull up its roots, curl into a ball, and keep "running" with the wind until it finds water again, whereupon it takes root on the spot and begins a new life. The tumbleweed's reproductive ability is also strong. Every late autumn, when the seeds ripen, the tumbleweed's unique "running migration" provides considerable convenience for seed dispersal. Its spherical form rolls and bounces with the wind, making the tumbleweed as efficient as a seed drill - everywhere it rolls, it scatters seeds, and when the rain comes, they begin to take root, sprout, and grow into new tumbleweeds.

Tumbleweeds can grow very large, some even able to rival a car, and combined with their tenacious vitality, they can bring no small amount of trouble to humans. Unless stopped, accumulated tumbleweeds will clog river channels and pile up under bridges.

In Wangaratta, in northeastern Victoria, Australia, runawaytumbleweedsblocked people's houses, and local residents had to spend several hours every day clearing them, complaining endlessly. Just think - prickly, rough balls of dried grass running wild everywhere, how annoying. For this reason, the United States Department of Agriculture even launched a plan to eradicate tumbleweeds, extracting a virus capable of infecting them, hoping to control these crazed "drifters."

Even though tumbleweeds are such a headache, and the "battle" against them is still ongoing, one still hopes a way can be found to control them rather than wipe them out. After all, the tenacious tumbleweed conveys to us the courage never to give in, and its wind-tossed rolling has a certain charm of its own, does it not?