Cirsium heterophyllum

Melancholy Thistle ( Cirsium heterophyllum )

The Melancholy Thistle ( Cirsium heterophyllum ), also called Alantdistel, is a plant which belongs to the subfamily of Carduoideae within the sunflower family ( Asteraceae).

Description

The Melancholy Thistle is a perennial herbaceous plant, the plant height of about 40 to 100 (up to 150 rare) achieved centimeters. The whole plant is only very weakly prickly. Your upright, often dark crowded, something graufilzigen, wingless stems are usually unbranched, at most with a few single-headed branches, and in the upper part strikingly leafless.

The green upper side, lower side white as snow - felted leaves are stalked than basal leaves, the stem sessile, and they sit amplexicaul, but not decurrent. Their shape varies from undivided broad - lanceolate more or less deeply pinnatifid gezipfelt to what the German name of the species derives. The common name is also " Alantdistel " refers to a remote resemblance of the undivided leaf variant and the general appearance of the Verschiedenblättrigen thistle with the corresponding features of the real thing Elecampane (Inula helenium ).

The numerous purple, rarely white tubular flowers form about 3.5 to 5 centimeters long, and thus quite stately flower heads, which are usually solitary, rarely more at the stem ends. Occasionally this type is therefore also called " shaving " in the vernacular. Prior to deployment, the individual flowers of the inflorescence may be inclined to one side. In conjunction with the so-called doctrine of signatures used in the English-speaking world the name " Melancholy thistle " for this species full blossomed are the inflorescences but again straight upright.

Ecology

The Melancholy Thistle grows preferentially in sickernassen to moist herbaceous communities, fresh to moist mountain meadows and subalpine tall herb bushes. By underground root runners it is able to reproduce vegetatively and form dense clusters. It is considered a nutrient- demanding. Studies have shown that the formation or expression of fiederspaltigen leaf shape strongly depends on the nutrient supply to the plant.

Dissemination

The main distribution area of Verschiedenblättrigen thistle extends from northern Britain over Northern and Eastern Europe to Siberia. Larger enclaves are located in the Caucasus, the Carpathians, Pyrenees, Alps and some German low mountain ranges, beyond occasional occurrence among other things, in Iceland and Greenland.

Occurrence priorities in Germany are the submontane and montane layers of Erzgebirge, Vogtland, Thuringian Forest, Fichtelgebirge, Böhmer-/Bayrischer Forest and the Alps. Lowland deposits in any numbers had only Schleswig -Holstein, however, most of which have gone before 1950.

System

Cirsium heterophyllum was first published in 1768 by Carl Linnaeus. Synonyms for Cirsium heterophyllum are Carduus L. helenioides auct. non L., Carduus heterophyllus L. - Sp Pl, 1753, pp. 824, Cirsium helenioides auct. Non ( L.) Hill.