July 17, 2013

Musk Thistle


This year meadows and fallow fields are indeed beautiful! Many wild flowers thrived after the rains of May and June and are abundant, and very often also taller than other years. Like this Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans) with pink-purple flowers, here photographied in a field left fallow for two years.






















The undersides of its prickly leaved are covered in a spider-web like tissue, and the flowerhead sits in an involucre with also spider-web threads between its prickly points.