Carthamus mitissimus Distaff Thistle
On a very windy but sunny day we came across a quite barren rocky hillside outside a small Spanish village. There was a good indication that in the summer months this would be a botanical treasure house but in April there was very little in flower. Nestling between some rocks though was this stemless thistly type thing. The first identification attempt was that it was Cardunculus monspeliensis but that plant is much spinier than this one appeared to be. The best guess for deification of this plant from the blurry photos I took was that it is Carthamus mitissimus which definitely grows in the Picos of northern Spain (Cardunculus is a synonym of Carthamus) according to Tela Botanica which also shows that it grows in much of France and is not necessarily a mountain plant.
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| Carthamus mitissimus Distaff Thistle |
Hillside near Robledo, Sierra Guadarrama, Spain 26th April 2014
Added on 22nd June 2014