Cirsium pulcherrimum |
Asteraceae tribe Cardueae |
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Wyoming thistle |
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Habit | Perennials polycarpic, 15–60(–90) cm; deep-seated woody tap-roots and caudices. | Annuals or perennials (sometimes coarse and/or robust, often prickly-spiny and thistlelike [subshrubs, shrubs, or trees]; rarely dioecious, e.g., some Cirsium spp.). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stems | 1–few, erect or ascending, arachnoid-tomentose or ± glabrate; branches 0–5+, usually in distal 1/2, ascending. |
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Leaves | blades linear to oblong, oblanceolate, or elliptic, 5–25 × 0.6–7 cm, unlobed and merely spinulose or spiny-dentate to regularly pinnatifid, lobes 5–8(–many) pairs, well separated, usually with broad, U-shaped sinuses to crowded, linear to triangular-ovate, ascending-spreading to retrorse, merely spinulose to coarsely dentate or few lobed, main spines 2–7 mm, ± slender, abaxial faces gray to white, usually densely arachnoid-tomentose, sometimes ± glabrate, sometimes villous with septate trichomes along veins, adaxial green, glabrous or less commonly thinly to densely gray-tomentose; basal often present at flowering, spiny winged-petiolate; principal cauline well distributed, gradually reduced distally, proximal usually winged-petiolate, mid and distal sessile, bases decurrent as spiny wings 1.5–3.5 cm; distalmost reduced, ± bractlike. |
basal and/or cauline; alternate; ± petiolate or sessile; (leaf bases often decurrent on stems) margins usually lobed to dissected, sometimes dentate or entire (usually spiny). |
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Peduncles | 0–15 cm. |
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Involucres | ovoid to campanulate, 1.8–2.7 × 1–2 cm, thinly arachnoid-tomentose or glabrate. |
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Receptacles | flat to convex, usually epaleate (often pitted and often bristly-setose or densely hairy). |
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Ray florets | 0 (corollas of peripheral florets in radiant heads often notably enlarged, usually 5-lobed, sometimes zygomorphic and raylike or ± 2-lipped). |
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Peripheral (pistillate) florets | 0 or (in disciform heads) in 1–3+ series; corollas (usually present) usually yellow, sometimes ochroleucous or cyanic. |
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Disc florets | bisexual and fertile (rarely functionally staminate); corollas yellow, cyanic, or white, usually actinomorphic, lobes 5, usually narrowly triangular to ± linear, seldom deltate (sometimes unequal, corollas then ± zygomorphic); anther bases ± tailed, apical appendages usually oblong (filaments sometimes papillate to pilose; connate in Silybum); styles (bisexual, fertile florets) distally enlarged or swollen, usually dilated and/or with rings of hairs at or near point of bifurcation, abaxially smooth or papillate to hairy (at least distally, sometimes ± throughout), “branches” often connate, adaxially continuously stigmatic ± to tips, apices rounded to acute, appendages essentially none. |
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Corollas | pink to purple (creamy white), 18–25 mm, tubes 7–9 mm, throats 5.5–7.5 mm, lobes 4–8 mm; style tips 3–5.5 mm. |
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Phyllaries | in 6–7 series, ± imbricate, green or with dark subapical patch or appendage, linear to linear-lanceolate, margins entire, abaxial faces with narrow glutinous ridge; outer and middle bases appressed, apical appendages spreading to stiffly ascending, linear-lanceolate to acicular, entire, spines spreading or ascending, stout, 2–7 mm, often flattened; apices of inner stiffly erect or sometimes flexuous, narrow, flat. |
usually persistent [readily falling], in (1–)3–5+ series, usually distinct, usually unequal, usually herbaceous (sometimes fleshy), margins (entire or denticulate to pectinate, sometimes spiny) and apices seldom notably scarious (apices often spinose or ± expanded into distinct, often fimbriate-fringed, pectinate, and/or spiny appendages). |
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Calyculi | 0 (involucres sometimes closely subtended by leaflike peduncle bracts). |
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Heads | 1–few, borne singly or in 2–3-headed clusters in ± congested flat-topped or racemiform arrays at tips of main stem and branches, sometimes also in distal axils. |
mostly homogamous (usually discoid, sometimes disciform or radiant, then peripheral florets usually pistillate or neuter, sometimes bisexual or with staminodes), borne singly or in corymbiform, paniculiform, or racemiform arrays (heads with 1 floret each aggregated into second-order heads in Echinops). |
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Cypselae | tan to dark brown, 5–6 mm, apical collars yellow, narrow; pappi 14–16 mm. |
usually monomorphic within heads (often thick-walled, hard, nutlike, receptacular attachments basal or lateral, bases sometimes each with an elaiosome), usually ellipsoid, obovoid, or ovoid, sometimes rounded-prismatic, terete, 4–5-angled, or ± compressed, rarely beaked, bodies usually smooth, sometimes rugose or 10- or 20-nerved (glabrous or puberulent to villous; often with apical umbo and/or crown in addition to pappus); pappi (rarely 0) readily falling or persistent, usually of fine to coarse, barbellate to plumose bristles, sometimes of scales, sometimes both bristles and scales. |
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2n | = 34. |
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Cirsium pulcherrimum |
Asteraceae tribe Cardueae |
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Distribution |
CO; ID; MT; NE; UT; WY
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Mostly Old World; especially Mediterranean [Some species widely introduced] |
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Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). Cirsium pulcherrimum is closely related to C. clavatum. In southeastern Wyoming and northern Colorado some plants combine foliage and involucral characters of C. pulcherrimum var. pulcherrimum and C. clavatum var. americanum. The inheritance of these characters needs to be examined at the population level to determine whether the intermediates are hybrids or the products of past introgression or incomplete differentiation. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Genera 83, species 2500 (17 genera, 116 species in the flora). The circumscription for Cynareae adopted here is the traditional one and includes the three elements (Cynareae in the narrow sense, Carlineae, and Echinopeae) recognized as tribally distinct by M. Dittrich (1977[1978]). Work by K. Bremer (1987) supported the Dittrich scheme. A traditional circumscription of Cynareae was maintained by J. L. Panero and V. A. Funk (2002). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 19, p. 125. | FNA vol. 19, p. 82. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Asteraceae > tribe Cardueae > Cirsium | Asteraceae | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Synonyms | Carduus pulcherrimus | family Asteraceae tribe Cynareae | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name authority | (Rydberg) K. Schumann: Just’s Bot. Jahresber. 29(1): 566. (1903) | Cassini | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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