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Marsh Thistle

Marsh Thistle

Cirsium palustre

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How common: Very common

Marsh thistle is a tall, spiny plant of wet ground. It has a slender, often dark reddish stem and a tight cluster of small purple flower heads at the top. You can spot it in marshes, wet meadows, ditches and shores across much of Europe, and it has also spread to North America.

Did you know?

  • Its stem is often dark maroon, making it easy to pick out among other wetland plants.
  • The seeds have a white, fluffy “parachute” that helps them drift on the wind.

About the species

Identification

50–200 cm, biennial (sometimes longer-lived but flowers once). Stem slender, usually unbranched below the top, grooved, with spiny wings, often dark reddish. Leaves narrow and stiff, deeply cut into many narrow lobes with rather soft spines; top side dark green, underside pale and woolly. Flower heads are small (about 1–1.5 cm), short-stalked and crowded at the top; flowers purple‑violet (sometimes pink or white). Each head has narrow reddish‑brown scales ending in small spines. Seeds have white fluff. Flowers in Finland from July to September.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

meadow

Flowering

Jul–Sep

About the habitat

Grows in wet places: damp meadows and pastures, ditch and stream banks, marshes and boggy ground, lake and river shores, springs, and wet woodland edges. Common through southern and central Finland up to southern Lapland; scarcer farther north and only occasional in Inari Lapland.

Sources

Photo: Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cirsium palustre inflorescence - Niitvälja.jpg

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki leviäimet, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39889

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki versot, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39889

Text: Pinkka: BIO-503 Suomen kasvisto ja kasvillisuus - Kulttuuriympäristöt: niityt, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39889

Text: Pinkka: IPS-153 Flora of Subarctic Europe - Carex-Cirsium, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39889

Text: Pinkka: Ålandsexkursion, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39889

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suo-ohdake

See also