Rolling, rolling, rolling. That tumbleweed keeps rolling, along. It bounces and rolls, and it'll just roll until it runs into a fence or something like that. Although tumbleweed is a generic term for several different types of plants that snap off at the base and roll, Allred says what most people call tumbleweed is actually Russian thistle. It's an annual weed that adapts to a variety of habitats.
Russian thistle is native to the steppe and grassland areas of Russia.
It came over with Russian immigrants in some flax seed. They planted their flax and this Russian thistle came up. After that, the weed spread quickly, and within 20 years it hit New Mexico. Samples were sent here to the agriculture college at Las Cruces to Professor E.O. Wooton, who was an Agricultural Experiment Station botanist, and he verified it was Russian thistle. In 1895, Wooton issued a report about the weed's spread.