Fighting the Thistle

I’ve been battling a type of thistle in my yard for the past several years. Apparently the previous homeowner thought this certain type of thistle was “pretty” and intentionally put it in the landscape. Yes, the blooms this thistle produces are pretty in their own way, but that’s about as far as its allure goes. It is an invasive and “vicious” plant. It seems though that help is on the horizon in the war on invasive thistles in the form of a biological control species of mite and weevil. Now before you say that the cure sounds worse than the disease; scientific research has shown that these mites and weevils do not negatively affect any non targeted plants. Of course that easily recognizable icon of the old west seen in just about every western ever made, the tumbleweed, is in actuality the Russian thistle. And it’s about as invasive as you can get, causing millions of dollars of damage yearly. If the USDA is successful in their attempt to use these biological dynamos to stop the Russian thistle and its cousins, the tumbleweed may soon become just an image on celluloid.