Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Asterales > Asteraceae > Cirsium > Cirsium vulgare

Cirsium vulgare (Spear Thistle)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Cirsium vulgare (spear thistle, bull thistle, or common thistle) is a species of the genus Cirsium, native throughout most of Europe (north to 66°N, locally 68°N), Western Asia (east to the Yenisei Valley), and northwestern Africa (Atlas Mountains). It is also naturalised in North America, Africa, and Australia and is an invasive weed in some areas. It is the national flower of Scotland.
View Wikipedia Record: Cirsium vulgare

Infraspecies

Cirsium lanceolatum var. concolor
Cirsium strigosum var. khorassanicum
Cirsium strigosum var. strigosum
Cirsium vulgare var. oligocephalum
Cirsium vulgare vulgare

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Cirsium vulgare

Attributes

Edible [1]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [1]  Hermaphrodite
Lifespan [1]  Biennial
Pollinators [1]  Bees, Flies, Lepidoptera, Beetles, Bats
Structure [3]  Herb
Usage [1]  A fibre obtained from the inner bark is used in making paper. The fibre is about 0.9mm long; The stems are harvested in late summer, the leaves removed and the stems steamed until the fibres can be stripped off. The fibres are cooked with lye for two hours and then put in a ball mill for 3 hours. The resulting paper is a light brown tan; The seed of all species of thistles yields a good oil by expression; No details of potential yields etc are given; The down makes an excellent tinder that is easily lit by a spark from a flint;
Height [1]  6.56 feet (2 m)
Light Preference [2]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [2]  Moderate Acid
Soil Fertility [2]  Rich
Soil Moisture [2]  Moist
View Plants For A Future Record : Cirsium vulgare

Protected Areas

+ Click for partial list (100)Full list (133)

Ecosystems

Predators

Providers

Consumers

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 2ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 3Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 4Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 5Ecology of Commanster
♦ 6Study of Northern Virginia Ecology
♦ 7Spermophilus lateralis, Molly A. Bartels and Doug P. Thompson, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 440, pp. 1-8 (1993)
♦ 8Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 9New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 10del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 11Comparatore, Viviana, and Cristina Yagueddú. Diet of the Greater Rhea (Rhea americana) in an agroecosystem of the Flooding Pampa, Argentina. Ornitologia Neotropical 18.2 (2007): 187-194.
♦ 12Sylvilagus bachmani, Joseph A. Chapman, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 34, pp. 1-4 (1974)
♦ 13Tamias ruficaudus, Troy L. Best, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 452, pp. 1-7 (1993)
♦ 14Robertson, C. Flowers and insects lists of visitors of four hundred and fifty three flowers. 1929. The Science Press Printing Company Lancaster, PA.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0