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National Invasive Species Information Center
U.S. Department of Agriculture
  1. Home
  2. Terrestrial Invasives
  3. Terrestrial Plants
  4. Scotch Thistle

Scotch Thistle

Scientific Name

Onopordum acanthium L. (ITIS)

Common Name

Scotch thistle, cotton thistle, heraldic thistle, woolly thistle

Native To

Eurasia (Briese et al. 2003)

Date of U.S. Introduction

1800s (Schuster and Prather 2003)

Means of Introduction

Ornamental (Schuster and Prather 2003)

Impact

Crowds out desirable forage (Schuster and Prather 2003)

Scotch thistle

Scotch thistle, flowers

Credit

Photo by Steve Dewey; Utah State University

Source
Invasive.org.

Find more images

Distribution / Maps / Survey Status

Videos

Selected Resources

The section below contains highly relevant resources for this species, organized by source.

View All Scotch Thistle Resources
Council or Task Force
Partnership
Federal Government
International Government
State and Local Government
Academic
Professional
Citations