Carlina vulgaris is an unusual brown thistle
I find this wildflower easy to spot as the prickly foliage combines with a flower head that looks almost ready-dried.
Carline thistle likes chalk grassland
In the photograph below you can see Carline thistle Carlina vulgaris growing near the chalky Seven Sisters cliffs on the South Coast. This thistle is a chalk indicator species and here you can see it growing among other indicator species Eyebrights Euphrasia and Bird’s Foot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus. I found it in flower in August.
The plant this thistle is most likely to be mistaken for is Greater Knapweed Centaurea scabiosa. I find that the Knapweed seed heads look similar to these flowers. But if you look closely at the photo below you can see that, if you catch it in flower, you can see the tiny individual purple florets. If you find it not in flower, you can see that the leaves are quite different as Carlina vulgaris is a prickly thistle and Centaurea scabiosa has soft leaves.
Identifying Carlina vulgaris
Carline thistle is an upright plant, often sitting above the short sward where they like to grow, up to about 50cm high. Being a thistle it is spiny. The stems can be purple flushed as you can see in the image below. I have read that the lower leaves can be cottony but I haven’t noticed this myself. The leaves are about 5cm long, spear-shaped with wavy edges and spines. You can see that the leaves clasp the stem, having no leaf stem and looking like the leaf base is gripping the stem.
The flower heads can be single or clustered and up to about 4cm across when open. The green outer bracts are very spiny. The inner light brown bracts resemble long thin daisy petals.
The seed heads are fluffy. See more images at Naturespot.
I took the photo of the Seven Sisters while standing in the Seaford Head Nature Reserve
Read about the other plants I found nearby