192 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
plant, the leaves so deeply lobed as to be almost 
pinnate, and the heads sometimes as much as three 
inches across. These are bright purple in hue, 
varying to pink and white. The outer florets have 
long rays, and are barren as in Knapweed. All the 
florets are longer than in that species, consequently 
the honey cannot be reached by all insects, so it is 
not surprising that Miiller’s observations on this plant 
gave him the names of twenty-one insects as com- 
pared with the forty-eight that patronised C. nigra. 
The favourite Cornflower, or Blue-bottle (C. cyanus), 
has only a few spreading lobes to its slender leaves, 
and the heads, which are smaller, have a flatter 
appearance: the bracts have white and brown teeth. 
The disk-florets are purplish-blue, but the few larger 
ray-florets are bright blue. Here again the stamens 
are very contractile. The rare Star Thistle (C. 
calcitrapa), a biennial of dry wastes in the southern 
half of England, has small rose-purple heads, less than 
half an inch across, but very singular in appearance 
on account of the bracts ending in long yellow spines, 
which give a (conventional) starlike aspect to it. 
This appearance is more marked in the larger intro- 
duced species, C. solstitialis. 
We make acquaintance with the true Thistles 
through the medium of the finest native species—the 
Musk-thistle (Carduus nutans), a bold handsome 
plant, growing erectly for four or five feet, with spiny 
leaves, and solitary half-round crimson heads, two 
inches across, which give out a musky odour. The 
outer bracts of the involucre end in long spines, and 
before the head is open these spines are connected 
by little cottony wisps that give the appearance of 
