A very striking and decorative plant, both in form and color, from two to six feet tall, with a pale, branching, leafy stem, covered with close, white down, springing from a cluster of large root-leaves. The leaves are gray-green, covered with white down, and show great beauty of design, being sharply and symmetrically lobed and toothed, the margins armed with long yellow prickles. The flower-heads are an inch and a half long, with beautiful carmine and pale-pink flowers, all with no tinge of purple, the vivid spots of color giving a very brilliant effect in contrast with the pale foliage. This grows in the Grand Canyon and is conspicuous along the Berry trail, a little way below the rim.
Thistle
Càrduus candadíssimus
Pink, crimson
Summer
California
A very handsome and decorative plant, about three feet tall, with spreading stems, covered with white down, and dull-green leaves, pale with down on the under side and often covered with white down all over. The handsome flower-heads are two inches or more long and have deep pink or crimson flowers and very woolly involucres.
California Thistle
Càrduus Califórnicus
White
Spring
California
A branching plant, from two to six feet tall, very leafy below, with very dark bluish-green leaves, with more or less woolly down on the upper side and pale with matted down on the under side. The flower-heads are nearly three inches across, with cream-white or rarely purple flowers, and the bracts are caught together with silky, cobwebby down. This is common in the Sierra Nevada.
Western Thistle
Càrduus occidentàlis
Red, purple
Spring
Cal., Oreg.
A stout plant, two or three feet high, with large prickly leaves, and more or less covered all over with cottony wool. The flower-head is about two inches long, and nearly as wide, and is a ball of white, cobwebby wool, pierced all over with brown spines, and tipped with wine-colored flowers. This is common on sandy hills, near the coast, from San Francisco south. Yellow-spined Thistle, C. ochrocéntrus, found in Nevada and Arizona and as far east as Colorado, has purple flowers and leaves deeply slashed and armed with long yellow spines. This grows at the Grand Canyon.
Arizona Thistle—Carduus Arizonicus.
