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Arizona thistle

Cirsium arizonicum

Arizona thistle
Photo: Benjamin Cody, CC BY-SA 3.0
Family
Asteraceae (Daisy family)
Grows as
Perennial
Native range
SW. U.S.A. to New Mexico and Mexico (Chihuahua, Sonora)

About

Cirsium arizonicum, the Arizona thistle, is a North American species of thistle in the family Asteraceae, native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. It has been found in Arizona, southeastern California, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Sonora, and northwestern Chihuahua.

Cirsium arizonicum is a herbaceous plant that can be either biennial or perennial, reaching 30–150 cm in height. The spiny leaves are oblong-obovate with pinate lobes; the basal leaves are larger, 10–40 cm long, while leaves on the upper stem can be only 3 cm long. The inflorescence is 3–4 cm in length and 1.5–2 cm diameter, red to pink or purple, with all the florets of similar form (no division into disc and ray florets); individual plants are very variable in the number of heads produced, from one to 100. Flowering is from mid spring to mid fall.

Other Cirsium plants

Dwarf Thistle · Tall thistle · Rose thistle · Franciscan thistle · Alishan Thistle · Creeping Thistle · Barneby's thistle · Cirsium boninense · Cirsium brachycephalum · Palouse thistle · Clustered thistle · Prairie thistle

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cirsium arizonicum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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