This stately and beautiful plant is common in all parts of the Alps, but is found nowhere else. It grows in moist places in the meadows and pastures, and beside the streams, between 4000 and 7000 feet. It is generally looked upon as a noxious weed by the herdsmen, but in one or two places the upper and more succulent parts are gathered and preserved as pigs’ food for the winter.
The thick evergreen leaves, armed with formidable spines, are paler at the upper part of the stem where they surround the large brown flower-head. Usually but a single flower-head is borne by each plant, but each one produces some hundreds of seeds. Each seed has a feathery wing-like appendage, so that it may be more easily distributed by the wind. The Spiny Fuller’s Thistle is usually some 3½ or 4 feet high, as was the specimen photographed, but in high altitudes the plant is more bushy and stunted. Under these conditions it is not unlike the Stemless or Alpine Carline Thistle (Carlina acaulis), which, in spite of its name, has sometimes a stem some 8 or 10 inches long. But the Carline Thistle has a larger and more flattened flower-head, and when the flowers are in bloom they are of a purple colour, though they soon turn brown as they get dried up.
Probably the nearest relation of the plant here photographed is the Common Fuller’s Thistle (Circium oloraceum), abundant in moist places, both in the Alps and lowlands. It is a plant that would seem to be protected by its resemblance to other members of its family, for though it appears spiny, it is soft and succulent, and bears not a single prickle anywhere. The leaves, which are sparsely distributed on the slender stem, are of a dirty grey-green colour, and though as tall as its spiny relative, the plant is much less robust.