Cirsium texanum

Common name: Texas thistle
Family: Asteraceae
Size: Up to 1.5 m tall
Description: Upright, spiny, woolly
Habitat: Several soils

Flower:

• 3.8 across
• Ray flowers absent, disk flowers numerous,
• Color purple-rose to pink held in cup of prickly-tipped bracts.
• Heads solitary at tips of long, woolly, almost leafless stalks

Stem and leaves:

• Leaves 10-30 cm long
• Alternate, numerous, clasping stem at base, lower surface with whitish hairs
• Blade with triangular or rounded lobes on each side, each lobed irregularly spiny-toothed
• Basal leaves larger, upper leaves smaller
• Stem solitary, much-branched in upper portion