Basin wiki · Plants
Tumbleweed
Salsola tragus · Russian thistle · Kali tragus
The weedy Russian thistle that dries into the rolling ball that piles on fences after wind.
In the basin
An invasive annual from Eurasia. After a wet winter it greens up on roadsides, lots, and the gaps between creosote — the disturbance carpet the creosote page already flags with mustard. By summer the plant dies, breaks off, and tumbles. That is a fire and fence problem, not a native desert shrub. Wikipedia and Cal-IPC have the ID.