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Cirsium horridulum
Also called Bristly Thistle, Bull Thistle, Horrid Thistle, Horrible Thistle, Purple Thistle, Bristle Thistle
Yellow thistle (Cirsium horridulum) is a spiny native North American biennial or short-lived annual thistle that grows up to about 2.5 m tall, with flower colour varying from white and yellow to pink, red and purple. It is grown mainly for wildlife value, since it feeds butterflies and bees, and it needs open sunny ground.
Cirsium horridulum, called bristly thistle, purple thistle, or yellow thistle is a North American species of plants in the tribe Cardueae within the family Asteraceae. It is an annual or biennial.100 The species is native to the eastern and southern United States from New England to Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma as well as to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Bahamas.
Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859) described var. megacanthum as "one of the most terribly armed plants in the genus."
C. horridulum is a facultative upland species that can grow in wetlands, but is usually found in non-wetland ecosystems. Its seeds are cypsela that are dispersed by birds and wind.
Creeping Thistle · Edible thistle · Elk thistle · Marsh Thistle · Brook Thistle · Meadow thistle · Wavyleaf thistle · Spear Thistle · Thistle
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cirsium horridulum 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.
