All Floras      Advanced Search
FNA Vol. 19, 20 and 21 Page 12, 28, 64, 82, 83, 85 Login | eFloras Home | Help

9. Echinops Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 2: 814. 1753; Gen. Pl. ed. 5, 356. 1754.

Globe thistle [Greek echinos, hedgehog, spiny, and ops, face, appearance, alluding to spiny heads]

David J. Keil

Perennials, 100–200 cm, herbage usually ± tomentose, spiny. Stems usually erect, simple or branched. Leaves basal and cauline; sessile or petiolate; blade margins dentate to pinnately 1–3-pinnately lobed or divided, lobes and teeth spiny, faces ± tomentose, sometimes glandular. Heads discoid, many, each with 1 floret, sessile, in pedunculate, spheric secondary heads. Secondary involucres of reflexed, laciniate-pinnatifid bracts. Primary involucres ellipsoid, subtended by bristles. Phyllaries many in several series, unequal, lanceolate (outer) to linear (inner), entire, apices sometimes expanded and fringed, not spine-tipped. Receptacles turbinate, bearing elongate subulate scales . Florets 1 per primary head; corollas white to greenish, blue-gray, blue, or purple, tubes elongate, throats very short, lobes linear; anther bases sharply tailed, apical appendages narrowly triangular, acute; style branches: fused portions with minutely hairy rings, distinct portions divergent, linear-oblong. Cypselae ± cylindric, 4-angled, apices ± truncate, without crowns, densely villous with long, stiff, appressed or ascending, multicellular hairs, attachment scars basal; pappi of many, short. ± connate [or distinct] scales. x = 13, 14, 15, 16.

Species ca. 120 (3 in the flora): introduced; Eurasia, Africa.

1 Lobes of leaf blades linear or narrowly oblong   3 Echinops ritro
+ Lobes of leaf blades lanceolate to triangular   (2)
2 (1) Adaxial leaf faces glandular   1 Echinops sphaerocephalus
+ Adaxial leaf faces glabrous or sparsely strigose   2 Echinops exaltatus

Lower Taxa

