Spanish carline thistle
Carlina hispanica
Family · Asteraceae · Irritating
The thistle that looks made of golden straw: its outer bracts open in a star and shine like paper petals. They stand there, dry and intact, months after the plant dies.
Scrubland · Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Uplands
Also known ascarline thistle
How to tell it
A stiff plant to seventy centimetres, with spiny cut leaves. The head is the signature: a crown of narrow, dry, straw-coloured or golden bracts radiating around a brown disc. They open in sun and close in damp, which makes a barometer.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
In villages of the Pyrenees and the northern Peninsula a dried head was nailed to the house door as protection, and it really does work as a hygrometer: it closes before rain. It has no food use.