Public Nuisance No. 1 : When Terrible Weeds Tumble, It’s Trouble

Dusk has fallen on a desolate stretch of desert highway, where a motorist and his wife are stranded with engine problems. They peer under the hood of the car, oblivious to the pack of killer tumbleweeds rolling quietly their way.

One bush leaps for the woman’s throat and she screams. But her husband reaches for his cigarette lighter, torches the tumbleweed and saves the day.

This scenario, an episode from an early television suspense show, isn’t far off the mark. In Los Angeles County, the tumbleweed heads the most-wanted list of the Department of Agriculture-Weights & Measures and is one of the two most troublesome weeds in the state, according to agriculture specialists. It is insidious, omnipresent, indestructible.

Widespread Nuisance

Throughout the prairies, plains and deserts of the United States, tumbleweeds have jumped into the paths of speeding motorists, choked canals and swimming pools, and caused floods and fires. In Rankin, Tex., tumbleweeds driven by 98-m.p.h. winds piled up 10 feet deep on one Saturday in 1983, blocking state Highway 349 for seven hours and burying at least one car.

“It’s the No. 1 nuisance weed in Los Angeles County,” said Monroe Polk, deputy director of the county Agricultural Department.

And Lloyd Andres, research leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biological Control of Weed Laboratory in Albany, Calif., says that the tumbleweed is one of two most troublesome plants in the state. “In Southern California it might be the No. 1 nuisance weed,” he said. “It certainly is along Interstate 5. In Northern California you see more yellow-star thistle.”

When it’s growing in late winter and early spring, officials say, it gets big enough to obscure intersections, roads and airport runways.

But the real danger comes in late August and early September, when mature weeds--which grow to many feet in diameter--dry out, snap off at their bases and are rolled along by hot Santa Ana winds. So every year at this time the push is on to get property owners to eradicate the weed while it’s young.

Problem Area

Antelope Valley is plagued by the dreaded pest more than any other area in Los Angeles County, Polk said.

“It’s a countywide problem, but it’s much worse in the Antelope Valley,” he said. “It gets so bad there it actually buries houses. I’ve seen houses completely obliterated by tumbleweeds.”

But tumbleweeds are not a problem for everyone. In 1956, a ditch full of them saved the life of an Idaho man whose car went out of control. The tumbleweeds provided an effective cushion as the car rolled down a 40-foot embankment. When the car stopped, the man was able to drive it out.

And a Walla Walla, Wash., woman created the Tumbleweed Tannenbaum in 1982, flocking and decorating tumbleweeds and selling them for $20 each in her flower shop. Disposal was easy. “You just place the discarded weed in the backyard,” she said, “and it will be gone the next windy day.”

Although the tumbleweed is a beloved prop in Western movies--from the silent movie “The Great Train Robbery” to “Santa Fe Trail” and “They Died With Their Boots On”--the plant is not native to North America.

Russian Immigrant

In fact, it came from the Soviet Union. Called the Russian thistle, the plant was brought to the United States in the late 1800s accidentally, hitchhiking along with shipments of imported grain. If it’s Western at all, it comes from western Asiatic Russia, experts say.

A concerted effort has been made in California to get rid of the weed. In the 1970s, American scientists went to the Soviet Union to try to find natural insect enemies of the tumbleweed and introduce them in the United States.

But worsening relations between the Soviet Union and the United States has resulted in sharply curtailed research, Andres said.

Andres did a great deal of work with two kinds of moths that are indigenous to Pakistan and the Soviet Union. After the moths were brought here, they were distributed throughout California by the state Department of Transportation, which has the responsibility for keeping state-owned thoroughfares free of tumbleweeds and other nuisance plants.

In theory, the moth larvae are supposed to bore into the branches and eat them, so the tumbleweeds collapse and are not a threat. But the experiment was generally a flop.

Called a Disappointment

“It was a disappointment,” said Dan Cassidy, landscape specialist for Caltrans. “But it did work well in San Diego and Imperial counties and in the Coachella Valley.”

It didn’t work as well in Los Angeles County. This spring--as usual--Polk is trying to get property owners to clear tumbleweeds from their land before they grow and become a problem.

While Caltrans is responsible for weed control on state-owned roads and the county Agriculture Department has a $2.5-million annual program to clear weeds from county roads and rights-of-way, it is up to private property owners to clear their own land.

In February, the owners of 35,000 parcels of vacant Los Angeles County land received mailed warnings that they must get rid of their weeds or the county would do it for them at a cost, Polk said, of between $80 and $500. In April, Polk’s agency began a tractor program, plowing under tumbleweeds and other nuisance plants. And in June, squads of workers will begin clearing hills and valleys by hand.

Brush Fire Threat

And for good reason. “Historically, every year we’ve had a major brush fire in the Malibu area of about 50,000 acres,” Polk said. “It’s (worsened by) tumbleweeds and other weeds.”

Farmers with acres of land to weed usually rely on chemical herbicides to control the tumbleweed. For owners of smaller plots, officials suggest contacting a nursery for a commercial herbicide or just getting out a hoe and doing the job by hand while the plants are still young.

“I don’t know of any attempt to eradicate it (tumbleweed) anymore,” Andres said. “We just try to control it as best we can. They’re so widespread, they’re hard to eradicate, except maybe in your yard. And there, the best way to do it is with chemicals or by hand.”

So as far as the experts are concerned, homeowners will just have to weed it and weep.