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Onopordum
Also called Scotch Thistle, Cotton Thistles, Cotton Thistle
Onopordum, or cottonthistle, is a genus of plants in the tribe Cardueae within the family Asteraceae. They are native to southern Europe, northern Africa, the Canary Islands, the Caucasus, and southwest and central Asia. They are a ruderal species and grow on disturbed land, roadsides, arable land and pastures.
They are biennials (rarely short-lived perennials) with branched, spinose winged stems, growing 0.5–3 m tall. In the first season they form a basal rosette of gray-green felted leaves and rarely a few flower heads. In the second season they grow rapidly to their final height, flowering extensively, and then die off after seed maturation.
Cotton Thistle · Illyrian cottonthistle · Reticulate Thistle · Bull cottonthistle
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Onopordum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
