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Cirsium helenioides
Cirsium helenioides, the melancholy thistle, is an Asian and Arctic species of plants in the tribe Cardueae within the family Asteraceae. The species is native to Greenland (but considered extinct from Greenland since 1960), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Xinjiang and Kazakhstan.
Cirsium helenioides is a perennial plant herb up to 120 cm (48 inches) tall, usually not branched, blooming only once before dying. Leaves are green on top, woolly underneath, with thin spines along the edges. There is one flower head per plant, with purple (occasionally white) disc florets but no ray florets.
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
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In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Cirsium helenioides in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 742840.