Woolly distaff thistle
Carthamus lanatus
Family · Asteraceae · Irritating
The yellow late-summer thistle, wrapped in white cobweb and armed with hard outward-pointing spines, dominating verges and dry fields when everything else has dried. It goes through thin trousers easily.
Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Town and roadside
Also known assaffron thistle, distaff thistle
How to tell it
A stiff plant to a metre, its stem and leaves wrapped in a web of white hairs, especially near the flower. Yellow heads ringed by stiff, cut, spiny bracts. The stem leaves are divided into segments each tipped with a spine.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
No relevant use. It is a direct relative of cultivated safflower, source of the dye and the oil, but this one is not used. It indicates overgrazed pasture: it appears where livestock have eaten everything else.