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Echinops ritro
Also called Southern globethistle, Globe Thistle, Small Globe Thistle
Southern globe thistle is a compact, bushy herbaceous perennial with prickly leaves and steel-blue globe flowers in late summer. It thrives in full sun and well-drained soil and is widely grown in borders.
Echinops ritro, the southern globe thistle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae, native to southern and eastern Europe, from Spain east to Turkey, Ukraine, and Belarus, and western and central Asia east to Mongolia. The species is also sparingly naturalised in scattered locations within North America.
Echinops ritro and the subspecies E. ritro subsp. ruthenicus have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Plants previously reported as naturalised in Great Britain are mostly or all the related species Echinops bannaticus.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Echinops ritro 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.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
