Tag Archives: thistle

361/366 Fave flower

26 Saturday Dec 2020

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For the next few days, in the countdown to year end, I’m going to go through some of my 2020 highlights: special wildlife moments, favourite finds, best photos.

It’s difficult to choose a favourite wildflower – there are so many crackers! – but a group I confess I’m quite partial to are the thistles: Creeping and Spear are very common hereabouts, Dwarf and Carline can be found at local country parks and reserves, and this year I identified my first Musk thistles (Carduus nutans). The photo below shows one such in bud; the open flowers in all their glory can be seen in my blog Musk thistle, July 2020.

201226 musk thistle

214/366 Butterfly eggs

01 Saturday Aug 2020

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This Painted lady is only the fourth individual I’ve seen this year but she was by far the best, not because of her appearance, which is a little ragged around the edges, but because she was laying eggs … and I’d never seen a Painted lady egg before.

200801 painted lady

At just 0.65mm high, the egg is tiny and, in my reference book, it’s described as green but, to my eye, this one is more of a pale turquoise – the plant stem is green. And the plant is a thistle – Creeping thistle, I think, though it was a young plant with no flowers, which makes it harder for me to identify but probably more nourishing for the teeny tiny caterpillar to munch on when it emerges. Now if I can only find this exact plant again in approximately a week’s time …

And following hot on the heels of finding that Painted lady egg, today I spotted a female Common blue butterfly laying her eggs in a sheltered clearing. You can perhaps see in the photo how she is angling her body to deposit an egg underneath the foliage.

200801 Common blue egg laying

So, once again, I was able to find the newly laid egg and take some photos. According to my book, these eggs are usually 0.5mm in diameter and just 0.25mm high, so really tiny. I have no chance of finding this egg again but I’m really glad I had the chance to see it.

204/366 Musk thistle

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

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This gorgeous thistle was a new plant for me when I discovered it in a local farm field a couple of days ago. It’s a Musk thistle (Carduus nutans), also known as Nodding thistle, and it’s precisely the nodding habit of its growth that alerted me to something new.

200722 musk thistle (1)

Its flowers, though a glorious and vibrant pinky purple, droop downwards, nodding on long spineless stems and, in fact, compared to the upright habit of other thistles I see, this one’s growth habit overall is very droopy. It’s a bit of a sloucher, though, as its name suggests, those flowers have a musky smell that bees find particularly attractive, and several butterflies seemed to like it too.

200722 musk thistle (2)

The Plantlife website provides some interesting facts about the Musk thistle: apparently ‘its fleshy stem is edible and said to be delicious after peeling and boiling’ and ‘medicinally, the leaves have been used as a tonic to stimulate liver function, whereas the flowers have been used to reduce fevers and purify the blood.’

200722 musk thistle (3)

190/366 For the love of thistles

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

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Many people would consider the thistle – any thistle, all thistles – to be a weed but one look at these photos will show just what a diverse range of insects find the humble thistle an essential source of food. From flies and hoverflies, bees and wasps, to beetles and butterflies, the Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense) is a favourite of them all. And when the flowers are finished, it will be the turn of the birds to find nourishment in the thistle seeds. What an amazing wildflower this is!

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199/365 Short and prickly

18 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by in 365DaysWildin2019, nature, plants, wildflowers

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During today’s walk around Cosmeston I spotted a plant I’ve not seen before – or, at least, I’ve not consciously noticed before. It’s so easy to just walk over the things growing under your feet – although, in this case, if you were walking barefoot you couldn’t help but notice it!

190718 dwarf thistle (1)

It’s the Dwarf thistle (Cirsium acaule), and it’s easily identifiable as its single flower almost completely lacks a stem – the gorgeous purple flower sits right on top of a rosette of wavy and spiny edged leaves.

This thistle prefers to grow in low grasslands, particularly on calcareous soils, so it does tend to be quite localised but can be found in England as far north as Yorkshire and in south Wales.

190718 dwarf thistle (3)

Glistening silver and gold

22 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by in autumn, flowers, nature, wildflowers

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181122 carline thistle (2)

They glisten silver and gold in the late autumn sunshine these Carline thistles, with their thick fringe of papery bracts and heads of soft golden down. I blogged about the flowers last year; now here are the ‘everlasting’ seed heads that can be seen all through the chilly months of winter.

181122 carline thistle (1)

Wild word: fasciated

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by in flowers, nature, wildflowers

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Fasciated: Adjective; (Botany) Showing abnormal fusion of parts or organs, resulting in a flattened ribbon-like structure (Oxford Dictionary).

The thistle in my photo is an example; instead of developing in the circular shape that is usual for this plant, the flower has, for some unknown reason, become distorted into a flattened and elongated, almost oblong shape.

180711 fasciated

The everlasting thistle

18 Friday Aug 2017

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My new favourite flower resembles something you might find in a dried arrangement rather than a flower in full bloom but such is the look of the Carline thistle (Carlina vulgaris).

170818 Carline thistle (1)

It grows best on calcareous soils in Wales and England – they are thriving on the dry, stony grassland areas at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. It’s spiny, as you would expect from a thistle, but is not a tall plant, probably no more than knee-height, and it sends up its spiky flower heads on solitary stems that have between 2 and 5 flowers on top.

At first glance, you might think the flowers were dead but, if you look closer, you can see that they’re just like any other daisy-like flower, except for their brownish hues. When the sun touches them, they positively glow, and when the weather is cold and wet, they close up. The flowers can be seen from July through to September, after which they will dry out and often last right through the winter. I’m thinking that once they finish flowering, I might have to snaffle a couple to enjoy at home over the winter.

170818 Carline thistle (5)

A bewilderment of thistles

12 Friday Aug 2016

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Last Floral Friday I was confused about geraniums; this week it’s thistles and things that look like thistles that are causing my befuddlement.

160812 thistles (14)

It seems there are thistle lookalikes, like Lesser burdock (Arctium minus agg.) and Common Knapweed (Centaurea nigra), though admittedly, they don’t have thorns but the flowers are very similar. And then there are plants that have ‘thistle’ in their names that don’t look a bit like thistles to me: Smooth sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), for example, that looks more like a dandelion, and Globe thistle (Echinops sp.), which looks like a cross between a thistle, a teasel and an allium. And then there are the numerous varieties of actual thistles to decipher. Which genus is it: Cirsium, Carduus (Latin for ‘a kind of thistle’), Silybum (yes, really!) or Onopordum? And is it Spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare) or Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense) or Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) or Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthum)?

160812 thistles (13)

I think you can see why I’m not even going to try to identify these photos. I’m going to remain bewildered and simply enjoy their wonderful structures and gorgeous colours.