Ah yes, Monty Python definitely exploded every cliche ever made. Including the one that says: all mediaeval villages had extremely clean streets, and all the people had good teeth (apart from just one, extremely black one in a prominent place) - tooth, that is, not person. Although thinking about it ...

Getting back to America: how does Tumbleweed breed? It can't be by cross-pollination. You only ever see one of the buggers. And it's always the same one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2008 09:28AM by Jazz_Sue.

Jazz_Sue Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Getting back to America: how does Tumbleweed
> breed? It can't be by cross-pollination. You only
> ever see one of the buggers. And it's always the
> same one.


Perhaps it leaves spores to be picked up by next tumbleweed to pass over the same bit of ground?
If it is always the same one, the resultant inbreeding may explain why no tumbleweed has ever appeared on quiz show.

SkidMarks Wrote:
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> inbreeding may explain why no tumbleweed has ever appeared on quiz show.


Wouldn't inbreeding be advantagious on a quiz show? - after all, two heads are better than one!

There is only one tumbleweed - it doesn't breed - and is too busy with its Hollywood career to appear on quiz shows.

Roy Rogers sang in Tumbling Tumblweed of 'see them tumbling down...' which meant that back in the old days of black and white television there were more than one.

Is it an endangered species, or is it like the phoenix and arises from its own ashes/roadkill/whatever. Maybe it is an entity like the electron - always has the same values when observed.

A new category: quantum vegetation.

I have a new theory on tumbleweed reproduction. My car got hit by a tumbleweed once that was as big as the car itself (true story!) and if I hadn't swerved in time it would have hit directly instead of swiping and knocking the mirror off. I think the pernicious plant planned to plant its pollenated pods deep in the bowels of my car where they would slowly take over the vehicle and turn it into a full-grown tumbleweed ready to spread its species further. (No, I don't know where that sudden attack of alliteration came from.)

This thought that tumbling tumbleweeds tries tactics to terrorise the travelling tin tank traumatises the timid.

Tumbleweed: Return of the Triffids

On a roll, baby!

In the Riverina of NSW we get those little round things that look like a little ball of spokes and are about a handspan in size (Panicum effusum: Poaceae family).

Here, we call them "Hairy Panic" but I was speaking to someone from the Central West, where they're called "blow away grass". Last year I was driving along a country road and there were millions of them just bouncing along in a huge rolling mat for miles - I had to not look at them as they began to mesmerise me. "Tumblin' along with the tumblin' Hairy Panic" just doesn't have the same feel to it.

They are poisonous to sheep apparently.

You've just set the scene for a new series of movies/book/spinsoff: Tumbling panic and the spikes of doom; Tumbling panic and the Cobar plains of doom.

Let your mind roll!!!!!

And poisoned sheep.

Genetically engineered goats with projectile horns.

<considers that fatigue may be having effect>

Make that poisonous sheep, like those poisonous passerines!

OOOH! Did anyone see Black Sheep (The kiwi zombie sheep movie)?

No, but I have got a copy of Poultrygeist.......

<groans abound!>

And I've got Frankenswine on DVD.

I'll have to borrow that one, and lend you Army of Duckness.

Unbelievers!