Russian thistle
noun
Forms Russian thistles
- noun Any of several species of genus Salsola and its close relatives, prickly shrublike annuals, especially Salsola tragus (syn. Kali tragus, which is the best-known kind of tumbleweed in the US.
- noun (Australia) Salsola australis
Synonyms
prickly Russian thistle Russian tumbleweed Russian cactus tumbleweed Salsola kali tenuifolia
Etymology
From Russian + thistle: believed to have been introduced to North America from Russia, and is prickly like a thistle.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “Russian thistle”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details