There's a beautiful wild flower known as Centaurea americana with a similar flower. They grow along the roadsides all over eastern Oklahoma. Is your flower thornless? EP

Here is a link that might be useful: centaurea?

Here are some good photos of the bull thistle. EP

Here is a link that might be useful: bull thistle

Hi EP

It is a little on the thorny side :-). It does grow a rosette the first year and then tall stalks the second year and blooms as the page you posted says. I started one in my flowerbed last spring and it didnÂt bloom. This year itÂs going nuts.

randy

I wondered if I was the only one that appreciated Thistles. Maybe we should start our own club...ha ha! I wish I had enough room to have one in my garden - I'm afraid it would steal the show if I did! As of this moment, my garden is on a small scale. Have to convince hubby to let me have more lawn!

Might be a good idea to see this link. EP

Here is a link that might be useful: noxious plants law

Beautiful pictures Randy, thanks for sharing them.
Jill, tell your hubby that lawn is highly overrated while flowers bring beauty and joy to life and feed the
wild things so you just HAVE to convert it to a flower bed :)
Leaper

Love the flower, hate that little boring carpenter bee in the last photo! I've lost so many canes to those little suckers. Nice pictures!

Those are beautiful! Coincidentally, I was toying with the idea of starting some Basket Flowers myself - Centaurea macrocephala....they are supposed to be yellow. The seeds I have were meant for 2001 and haven't been stored well so they probably aren't viable and I'm thinking it's too late to start them anyway.
-- by the way and off topic - I'm excited to have found this forum! *smile*

PrairieDaisie

Welcome to the forum!

randy