Roadside Bull Thistle(Cirsium vulgare). Composite family. Native to
Europe, naturalized in North America. The Bull Thistle has remarkably prickly branches
and spinky bracts with their characteristic yellow tips. It is a very large plant, standing out
along paths and roadsides at a height of sometimes more than two meters (six feet).
Bull Thistle is a biennial and forms a rossette of leaves the first growing season and
a tall, erect. spiny stem the next. Produces downy seeds carried considerable distances
by the wind.
(Photograph made during the third week of August, 2000.)

(Can be found flowering now along country roads and other waste places.)