Soldier thistle

Picnomon acarna, the soldier thistle, is a spiny annual herb in the Asteraceae family native to the Mediterranean region, southern Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, where it grows on dry fields, fallow land, roadsides, and overgrazed pasture. The plant reaches twenty to seventy centimetres tall with erect, white-cottony stems winged with rows of long, rigid yellowish spines. The alternate sessile leaves are oblong-lanceolate, deeply pinnatifid with each lobe ending in a sharp yellow spine, and densely woolly beneath. From early to midsummer the plant bears small solitary or clustered terminal flower heads about two centimetres across; the involucre is densely white-tomentose and armed with spreading spines, and the florets are uniformly tubular and pale pinkish-purple. The achenes are smooth, oblong, and crowned by a long plumose pappus that aids in wind dispersal.