so let me introduce to you Russian thistle Russian thistle is one of the major weeds that causes problems in the western US in terms of turning into really super nasty tumbleweeds so what I want to do is show you what it looks like when it's little so that you can eliminate it while you still have a fighting chance so this is Russian thistle right here and one way that you can recognize it is because it has these long fleshy leaves it almost looks a little bit like pine needles but it's not there kind of it a succulent fleshy leaf in addition if you look at it stem you'll notice that it's got purple striping or purple coloration on the main central stem so this is definitely a Russian thistle that you want to eliminate if you can while it's little and it does pull out really easily because it's germinated from seed in the spring now here's what it looks like when it's super tiny you can see that you don't really notice the purple striping on this stem but what you will notice is that it looks like a little almost like a little evergreen tree and once again this is something that you want to pull out while you have the chance let me show you what it looks like when it gets a little bit older here's a bigger Russian thistle plant and you can see that the it started to branch so it's starting to come into its own in terms of being a tumbleweed and in addition the purple striping on the stem is much more pronounced so once again a good one to pull what happens is that once this grows to be its full size which is about Oh two to three feet by two to three feet it'll flower and once it dries out then this whole entire above-ground portion separates from the root and it tumbles with the wind and spreads its seed far and wide so if you can catch it before it gets the chance to do that a very good thing to do and look how tiny that little root is porting a plant that can cause so many problems so be sure to eliminate Russian thistle while you can