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.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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