Alpen-kratzdistel

Cirsium spinosissimum is a stout perennial thistle of the Asteraceae family growing 15-60 cm tall from a thick branching rootstock, forming pale yellowish-green, conspicuously spiny clumps. Stems are erect, simple or sparingly branched above and densely leafy throughout. Leaves are alternate, oblong-lanceolate in outline, 10-25 cm long, deeply pinnatifid into narrow lobes that are themselves divided into rigid yellow-tipped spines; both surfaces are sparsely cobwebby-hairy and pale green to yellowish. The uppermost leaves are progressively more conspicuous, large, pale, spiny and form a stiff, leafy involucre that completely overtops and surrounds the dense, sessile cluster of capitula at the stem apex. Heads are several together, ovoid to cylindrical, 2-3 cm long, with strongly spine-tipped involucral bracts. Florets are all tubular, pale yellow to dull whitish, occasionally tinged purplish. The achene is oblong, brown and bears a long pappus of plumose feathery bristles. Native to stony alpine and subalpine pastures, screes, and rocky slopes of the central and southern European mountains, particularly the Alps, flowering in mid to late summer.