The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Cirsium arvense
Also called Canadian Thistle, Canada Thistle, Field Thistle, Californian Thistle, Perennial Thistle, Boar Thistle, California Thistle
Creeping thistle is a spiny perennial weed of the daisy family that spreads by underground roots into dense colonies, and it is one of the most troublesome invasive weeds worldwide. The key to growing or controlling it is its deep, persistent root system, which regrows from even small root fragments.
Cirsium arvense is a perennial species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae, native throughout Europe and western Asia, northern Africa and widely introduced elsewhere. The standard English name in its native area is creeping thistle. It is also commonly misnomered as Canada thistle and sometimes as field thistle.
The seeds are an important food for the goldfinch and the linnet, and to a lesser extent for other finches. Creeping thistle foliage is used as a food by over 20 species of Lepidoptera, including the painted lady butterfly and the engrailed moth, and several species of aphids. The C. arvense species is also noted to be a food source for the Altica cirsicola beetle species.
Like other Cirsium species, the roots are edible, though rarely used, not in the least because of their propensity to induce flatulence in some people. The taproot is considered the most nutritious part. The leaves are also edible, though the spines make their preparation for food too tedious to be worthwhile. The stalks, however, are also edible and more easily despined. Bruichladdich distillery on Isle of Islay lists creeping thistle as one of the 22 botanical forages used in their gin, The Botanist.
Edible thistle · Elk thistle · Yellow thistle · Marsh Thistle · Brook Thistle · Meadow thistle · Wavyleaf thistle · Spear Thistle · Thistle
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cirsium arvense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
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.
