This Thistle is very well known, particularly in Scotland, where it is
the national flower. It blooms in late summer and autumn.
The stem of the Scotch Thistle is very stiff and straight, with 'wings'
at each side. These wings are pale green flaps edged with very sharp
points, and they run from top to bottom of the stem. The stem itself is
white and woolly.
The Thistle flowers are a dull purple colour, and grow in a dense head,
forty or fifty of them closely packed together. If you pick to pieces
one of these heads, you will find that it is made up of many purple
tubes which are edged with five purple teeth. The foot of each tube is
enclosed in a covering of dingy yellow down.
When you have a great many of these flowers growing close together in a
head, the under part looks like a bundle of woolly down.
Below this down bundle you find a prickly green covering, in which there
are dozens of narrow green leaves. Each leaf ends in a sharp point, and
it is this prickly green covering which makes the Thistle such a
difficult flower to gather.
The leaves have very sharp points at the edges. They are dark green, and
are thinly covered with beautiful grey down. The young leaves are
entirely white and woolly until they open.