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.
Scolymus
Also called Golden Thistle, Golden Thistles
Scolymus is a genus of annual, biennial or perennial, herbaceous plants that is assigned to the family Asteraceae, and can be found in Macaronesia, around the Mediterranean, and in the Middle East. All species are spiny, thistle-like in appearance, with flowerheads that consist of yellow (rarely orange or white) ligulate florets, and canals that contain latex. It is sometimes called golden thistle or oyster thistle, and is known as سكوليمس (skwlyms) in Arabic and scolyme in French.
Scolymus grandiflorus occurs in Spain including the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, southern France including Corsica, Italy including Sardinia, Turkey, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
Around the Mediterranean, such as in Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey, the midveins of the rosette leaves of S. hispanicus, known in Spain as cardillo or tagarnina, are used as a popular wild food. It is generally gathered in April and May. These midveins are preboiled and lightly fried with garlic in olive oil. These serve as garnish for cocido. Fried cardillo is further combined with garlic, cured ham, and hard-boiled or scrambled eggs. Midveins are also used raw in salads. The roots are cooked and eaten, and compare in taste to salsify. Roasted roots have been used as a coffee substitute. Florets have been used as imitation saffron.
Large Flowered Golden Thistle · Common goldenthistle · Spotted goldenthistle
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Scolymus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
