The Spiny Fuller's Thistle 



(CIRCIUM SPINOSISSIMUM) 



(^See Frontispiece) 



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 3I 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 iCarlina 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. 



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