rolbos, noun

/ˈrɔlbɔs/
Plurals:
rolbosse/ˈrɔlbɔsə/.
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, rol to roll + bos bush; see quotation 1966.
The small tumble-weed Salsola kali of the Chenopodiaceae.
[1964 V. Pohl Dawn & After 43Far and near the dried skeletons of roll-bushes careered over the veld. These bushes were circular in form and very compactly interlaced, and in summer they flourished everywhere, but in winter they dried up and broke off at the root to be carried away by the wind.]
1966 C.A. Smith Common Names 392Rolbos, Salsola Kali...The vernacular name is derived from the fact that the stems break off from the annual rootstock when drying off and roll over the veld in the wind.
1973 Cape Times 30 July 11Piled up against the fences the up-rooted rol-bos (tumbleweed) — that strange round mass of ashen-grey twigs, weightless, powerless, driven hither and thither by the wind.
1974 E. Prov. Herald 9 Sept.On one farm a dense stand of rolbosse on 50 hectares of dryland easily carried 200 dorper ewes from lambing time until the lambs were weaned.
1989 F.G. Butler Tales from Old Karoo 201With her came..a teacher at the Training College who had..red hair, which she never brushed; it sat like a dry rolbos all around her head.
The small tumble-weed Salsola kali of the Chenopodiaceae.
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Afrikaans
roer, nounn.roman, nounn.
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