Onopordum illyricum
L. Illyrian ThistleErect annual or biennial to 2 m high; stems winged, unbranched below, white-woolly; wings to 10 mm wide, with spines to 8 mm long on lobes. Leaves basal and cauline; basal leaves oblanceolate to elliptic in outline, to 55 cm long and 15 cm wide, pinnatisect, with 8–10 pairs of toothed lobes, ultimate lobes tipped by a yellowish spine, white- or grey-woolly on both surfaces; cauline leaves narrow-lanceolate in outline, to 30 cm long and 10 cm wide, pinnatifid to pinnatisect, sessile with decurrent bases. Capitula shortly pedunculate, few in corymbose clusters at ends of stems, subglobose, 4–6 cm diam.; involucral bracts lanceolate, to 3 cm long, purplish, innermost ones erect and glabrous, outer reflexed, tapered into a short yellow spinose apical appendage, base cobwebbed. Florets longer than involucre, purple. Cypselas 4–5 mm long, 4-angled, wrinkled, light brown or grey; pappus 8–10 mm long, silky. Flowers spring and summer.
VVP, MuF, Gold. Native to Europe and western Asia. Occasional, in a few scattered localities in Victoria mostly in pasture and wasteland, and declared a noxious weed in the State.
Victorian plants have woolly stems, and strongly recurved intermediate and outer involucral bracts of the type subspecies (Tutin et al. 1976).
Spinning
