ALONG THE WAY

IF THERE EXISTS ANYTHING THAT EVOKES Arizona and the Southwest more effectively than dried-out tumbleweeds rolling across a deserted highway, Hollywood hasn't discovered it yet. A tumbleweed belongs to the American West as surely as Chiquita belongs to bananas. We can look as far back as 1935 and recall Gene Autry crooning "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" in a movie of the same title. In his smooth, honest

cowpoke voice, Autry sings the Bob Nolan lyrics:

I'll keep rolling along, Deep in my heart is a song, Here on the range I belong, Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds..

Few would question that an honest cowpoke belongs on the range with his critters, but how about those tumbleweeds?

I put the question to Tom Chambers, a singer and former president of the Western Music Association.

"The cowboy is not tied down," Chambers explained. "He Is tumbling, tumbling along. He's just part of nature, like the tumbleweed, and he requires harmony with nature to give him freedom. Without the

wind, the tumbleweed is just a dead

Russian thistle."

That's Russian thistle (Salsola kali), with the emphasis on Russian.

"The weed that won the West," as one Nevada researcher called it, ironically is not native to any Western state. Prior to the late 19th century, not a single tumbleweed could be found rolling along in the United States.

Shortly before the turn of the last century, however, Russian farmers began Emigrating to the plains of South and North Dakota, bringing with them sacks of flax seeds for making linseed oil and linen.

"Tumbleweeds came to this country in contaminated sacks of flax seeds," said Martin Karpiscak, a research scientist with the University of Arizona's Office of Arid Land Studies. "The seeds fell off trains and rapidly spread along railroad lines. In 20 years, it had spread several hunHundred miles."

If ideology could spread as efficiently as the tumbleweed plant, the entire world would undoubtedly be a part of Russia today. A single large tumbleweed, Karpiscak noted, can produce 200,000 seeds. All of those seeds, with a minimum of moisture, can germinate in as little as 30 minutes.

Despite the romantic image, the plants create expensive, obnoxious problems for many communities throughout the West. Tumbleweeds thrive in disturbed soils, so retired agricultural fields or areas leveled for new housing developments create prime breeding grounds for the brittle, prickly plants with roots that snap easily in light winds. "They have been a big problem at some military installations," Karpiscak observed, "and in other places they've been blown into such big Perhaps they've knocked down fences." Ever wonder how many drivers have swerved dangerously to get out of the way of a rolling ball of tumbleweed? You don't have to swerve at all, of course, because tumbleweeds will just disintegrate when you roll over them, but some people don't know that.

Numerous attempts to rid the West of this enduring symbol have met with very limited success. Tumbleweed-eating moths once were imported from the Middle East, but the moths,

Evidently, could not eat enough tumbleweeds

fast enough.

Well, what about humans? Maybe we could eat it to extinction. Any possibility that the tumblefast enough.

weed could be made palatable for the dinner table? A writer named Carolyn Niethammer thought so.

Her book, titled The Tumbleweed Gourmet, was published in 1987 by the University of Arizona Press. But "Cream of Tumbleweed Soup" never quite caught on as an epicurean delight, and the book went out of circulation in 1997.

Needless to say, the tumbleweed did not.

So another thought surfaced. If people won't eat tumbleweeds, maybe they'll burn them.

During the late 1970s, the Office of Arid Land Studies ground up acres of tumbleweeds and compressed them into fireplace logs. Pound for pound, researchers discovered, the tumbleweed contained as much thermal energy as wood. Wouldn't the public be impressed?

Some 10,000 "tumblelogs" were produced but, once again, the idea failed to catch on. Too many consumers found the odor of burning tumbleweeds offensive. Researchers toyed with the idea of adding some pine or oak scent to the mix, but that concept evidently never got off the drawing board.

Finally, economics reared its ugly head: The price of regular fuel woods dropped so low tum-blewood couldn't compete.

So there was no surprise when Karpiscak, who has studied tumbleweeds right down to their shallow roots, appeared confident when he said, "I doubt anybody will ever get rid of tum-bleweeds completely."