NOXIOUS WEED
CO, NM, UT

Carduus nutans (Musk Thistle)    
Asteraceae (Sunflower Family)

Semi-desert, foothills, montane, subalpine.  Meadows, disturbed areas.  Summer.
Mesa Verde National Park, Knife Edge Trail, July 17, 2004 (with Zachary and Spencer).

Carduus nutans is a prickly-beautiful, common, foreign invader of lawns, farm fields, roadsides, and disturbed mountain fields.  It reproduces by seed which it produces prodigiously, resulting sometimes in a spiny, impenetrable thicket of Thistle.  During its first year, Carduus nutans grows a basal rosette (sometimes several feet in diameter) and in its second year it produces a stout, tall flower stalk armed with sharply pointed leaves.  Cutting the rosette off just below ground level usually kills the plant.

Linnaeus named this genus and species in 1753.  "Cardus" is Latin for "Thistle" and "nutans" is Latin for "nodding", probably referring to the flower, which doesn't.

Semi-desert, foothills, montane, subalpine.  Meadows, disturbed areas.  Summer.
Navajo Lake Trail, August 30, 2007.