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Saddling up for Louis

2013; Wiley; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1890/1540-9295-11.4.224

1540-9309

Adrian Burton,

Plant Parasitism and Resistance

“The West was wilder than any man can write it, but my facts, my terrain, my guns, my Indians are real. I've ridden and hunted the country. When I write about a spring, that spring is there, and the water is good to drink” – Louis L'Amour. I have had a couple of Western short stories published –just one-pagers in a local magazine; not the kind of thing give you any bragging rights. Although I do not live in the American West, the scenery of my Spanish plains and mountains can easily provide inspiration for a Western story; any Coloradoan brought here blindfolded might readily believe he had been transported somewhere within his own state. Why, we even have tumbleweeds (Salsola kali). In fact, that might make where I live more “Western” than the West. For although this most iconic of all prairie plants has lent its name to Western films, books, restaurants, clothes stores, songs, and even boot collections, in America it is an invasive Eurasian weed. Indeed, Ronald L McGregor's Flora of the Great Plains records it as having spread across the US after first arriving in South Dakota around 1873, a stowaway in a flax seed shipment from Russia. (World Weeds: Natural Histories and Distribution by Holm et al. [1997] actually cites a reference by LH Dewey [1894] suggesting that it may have first appeared in the eastern US in the 1700s, but if it did, it did not spread far.) S kali would give farmers nightmares wherever it went, and by 1895 it had spread to California. However, given its arrival time in South Dakota, it could hardly have been found in New Mexico Territory in the early 1870s, the physical and widely regarded temporal setting of Louis L'Amour's famous novel Conagher, in which tumbleweeds are central to the plot. In this romantic frontier tale, the tragically widowed Evie Teale confronts her loneliness by writing down her thoughts, tying them to tumbleweeds, and setting them to the wind (Louis wasn't called L'Amour for nothing!) But if S kali wasn't yet present, then the greatest of all Western writers had made a serious mistake. And that just don't sit right. My deputy, Rod Lym, a Professor of Plant Sciences at North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo, didn't like it none neither, and he got us up an academic posse. Our parley proved worrying. “S kali spread west with ‘civilization'”, said Richard Zollinger, also a NDSU weed scientist. “So it may have come down through the dry states of Oklahoma and Texas, and then west from there.” His pardner Kirk Howatt added: “It's not implausible that it could have reached New Mexico by say, the later 1870s.” Freeman McGlothlin, a hand at an outfit known as the Louislamour.com Community (www.louislamour.com/community/bbs.htm), helped them out: “In Bert Murphy's Trailing Louis L'Amour in New Mexico, the title of chapter three is ‘Conagher's Stage Line 1870', although, on page 45 he states ‘The exact time of the story is difficult to determine. Conagher's service in the war and his latter experiences would indicate a time after 1870 and before the 1880s when the railroads came in.' ” But problems remained even when we tried shifting Conagher to the later 1870s. “Even if S kali had reached New Mexico by then, it might not [have been] widespread”, cautioned Cal Messersmith, another NDSU weed man brought out of retirement to ride with us. That was when New Mexico State University botanist Kelly Allred stepped in. “By 1915, S kali was one of the commonest introduced weeds in the state”, he explained. “But it was first found in New Mexico at the penitentiary at Santa Fe in 1894, as reported in an 1895 bulletin of the New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Station. It just probably wasn't blowing across the plains of New Mexico in the 1870s.” Set Conagher whenever you want; it was shaping up to look like L'Amour had got it wrong. Chasing down Louis' tumbleweeds. Or had he? Not nearly as common as S kali would become, and certainly not the strawball that connects tumbleweeds to all things Western, there is another contender for Evie Teale's windblown messengers: the more lonesome, and therefore perhaps more fitting, Amaranthus albus. It looks pretty much the same as S kali and certainly has the tumbling habit. “Although you often see this plant listed as an invasive from Central America, there are also many references to it being native to the US, including in the Flora of the Great Plains”, said Lym. “And it was certainly common throughout New Mexico by 1915”, added Allred. And then Zollinger and Howatt hit paydirt: “Britton and Brown's An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions 1913 documents A albus for 1763 – more than 100 years before Conagher – and as found throughout North America. And Grays Manual of Botany (1970 reprint) shows its distribution to include New Mexico!” Hmm, an unsung American tumbleweed in New Mexico, and at the right time. Louis had it right all along. I'll see you folks presently, along the trail.