Winter Roadside Weed—Russian thistle (Salsola iberica), member of
the Goosefoot family . . .

Russian Thistle (Salsola iberica) is indeed native to Northeastern
Europe, and was introduced to North America in the late 1800s.
Its two key features of sprouting seeds and quickly establishing
seedlings after minimum amounts of rain, and breaking off and
blowing about as a tumbleweed, have made it a wide-spread
weed of the drier parts of the Northwest.

—On the road in the Northwest of America.

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