The Wild Wild West Without Tumbleweeds

If you watch the old westerns on TV or the movies It's pretty easy to tell what is fake; obviously the punches, often the set, the backdrop, and yes usually the whiskey, (unless of course John Wayne in the scene). I'm Susan Allen when Open Range returns there is something you'll see in nearly every western that never existed in the Wild Wild West. How can you have a western movie or TV show without the tumbling tumbleweeds, (wasn't that a song?) If you watch a movie set in the west prior to 1885, the tumbleweed is a big oops because the plant didn't exist in America before that date when the member of the goosefoot family arrived in a shipment of wheat from Russia. Some weed experts also believe Ukrainian immigrants who settle in the Dakotas could have unknowingly brought tumbleweed seed with them as well in thier belongings. A type of Russian Thistle the noxious weed spreads its' seeds when it breaks off and rolls with the wind. Starting in the Dakota's tumbleweeds rolled into Canada, then virtually tumbled throughout the west. The plant was first documented in Texas around 1910. The weed that ranchers soon came to abhor, ah but interestingly that Hollywood apparently adored, was also called the wind witch, (not nearly as romantic for country songs.) Now whenever you watch an old western or any movie for that matter set prior to 1885 and you see those tumbling tumbleweeds know some set designer didn't do his or her homework.