10 
Height usually up to some few feet. Root thick, spreadingly 
penetrating to a gradually great length and depth through the 
soil, hence much ramified, very tenacious of vitality, the ramifi- 
cations of the root brittle. Stem furrowed, variously branched, 
particularly the upper portion, as well as the peduncles often 
somewhat lanuginous. Leaves, unless the lower, sessile, usually 
not decurrent or only slightly so, pinnatilobed or only short- 
sinuated or some almost entire, often crisped, pungent-pointed 
and spinular-denticulated, often nearly glabrous, or on below 
scantily webby-lanuginous. Headlets of flowers generally stalked 
and somewhat paniculated, upright, of two forms; those with 
perfectly polliniferons anthers on individual plants distinct from 
those p r °d U( u D g fertile seeds and larger, with more exserted 
flowers ; male involucre more semi-globular ; female involucre 
more truncate-ovate ; involucrating bracts comparatively small, 
much appressed, from broad to narrow lanceolar and slightly 
fringed, the lower the broadest and short-spinulous at their apex, 
the upper gradually the longest and hardly or not at all pungent, 
all imperfectly fringed with minute hairlets, often of a rather dark 
hue. Receptacle bearing capillulary-setular bracts between the 
flowers. Corolla pale-purplish or more lilac, seldom white, its 
five lobes much longer than broad, bluntisb, suddenly emerging 
from the very slender tube. Stamens alternate to the corolla- 
lobes, their filaments disconnected, rough ; anthers arrow-shaped 
linear, in the male plant perfect and therefore pollen -bearing. 
Style thinly filiform ; the two stigmas narrow but conspicuously 
broader than the style, and except at or towards their summit 
coherent, more divergent at the upper end in the female plant; 
fruits seed-like, truncate-ellipsoid, smooth, shining, less readily 
maturing than in most other species (the lithographic colouration 
incorrect). Pappus fragile, consisting of distantly plumous 
setiiles, finally seceding, those at least of the female plant con- 
spicuously overreaching the corolla. 
The most difficult of all our Thistles to subdue, though less 
copiously producing seeds fit to germinate. 
Explanation of Plate II. 
a. Perfect staminate plant ; flowering braueh with its leaves, 
natural size. 
1. Longitudinal section of a lieadlet of flowers; aside an 
enlarged floral bract. 
2. A separate corolla, the stigmas emerging. 
3. Corolla, laid open, showing also the stamens. 
4. A perfect anther, with part of the filament. 
5. Side and back view of sterile stigmas with their style. 
6. A sterile fruit. 
7. Pappus. 
8. A separate pappus-bristlet. 
2-8. Magnified, hut to various extent. 
