WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

This highly variable plant is considered more of a complex than a single species, with 5 intergrading varieties with overlapping features across the Southwest. The 20–60-inch tall stems may be branching or not, hairy or thinly cobwebby, with red, pink, or purplish flowers, and one to many cylindrical to rounded flower heads with rose to purplish flowers. Note the narrow, erect cluster of long, filament-like disk flowers.

FLOWER: May–October. Erect, tube-like florets, red to purplish, tipped with white, crowd the top of a cylindrical to rounded base with rows of phyllaries with long to short spines.

LEAVES: Alternate. Blades oblong to elliptic, to 18-inches long (45 cm), 3-inches wide (8 cm), margins deeply divided into regular lobes, spines 1/8–5/8-inch long (3–15 mm), bottom surface usually woolly-hairy, top surface sparsely hairy.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly soils, slopes, canyons, roadsides, disturbed areas; desert grasslands and scrub, foothills, pinyon-juniper-oak, pine-Douglas fir, aspen.

ELEVATION: 3,700–9,850 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, UT.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 12 native species of Cirsium in NM, 5 in  3 or less counties, and two introduced.  Four varieties of Arizona Thistle with slight differences occur in the state. The narrow, elongated flower heads distinguish this species.

NM COUNTIES: Western half of NM in low- to mid-elevation, dry habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, Curry, Dona Ana,  Grant, Hidalgo, Lincoln, McKinley, Otero, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, Sandoval, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance, Valencia.