Musk thistle (Carduus nutans)
Description: An aggressive herb in the aster family with showy flowers and erect stems up to 5' in height, branching near the top of the plant. Both leaves and leaves are spiny.
Life cycle: Biennial, occasionally winter annual
Habitat: Grows in neutral to acidic soils. It invades open natural areas, meadows, grassy bald, disturbed areas, old pastures, roadsides, waste places, ditch banks, old fields and old pastures.
Leaf: Spiny dark green coarsely lobed leaves with a smooth waxy surface and a yellowish to white spine at the tip, pinnate, shallow lobes.
Stem: Multi branched spiny stems 1.5'-6' tall.
Flower: Large disk-shaped showy red-purple flower heads which contain hundreds of tiny individual flowers are 1"-2" in length. Flower heads will droop to a 90-degree angle from the stem when mature hence an alternate name, nodding thistle. Each plant may product thousands of straw colored seeds.
Root: Long, fleshy taproot that can penetrate up to 1.3' in depth.
The problem is….the invasive nature of this plant can lead to severe degradation of native grasslands and meadows. Grazing animals on native vegetation gives the thistle a competitive advantage.
