Native Plant o' the day: Pasture Thistle

Since I am a restorer of all things native I am often destroying thistle, Canada and Bull Thistle for the most part. So it was refreshing to come upon Pasture Thistle (Cirsium discolor) at Ashburn Prairie. I'm pretty sure this is the only native thistle in all of Chicago park land. I'd estimate there are around 30-40 plants this year.




As a side note, I've been looking for some plains birding blogs and mostly coming up with nothing. I'm pretty sure there are no Kansas birders blogging, but I did come across a nice blog called Nebraska Birding run by Kayleen. Stop on by and say hi. And if you run across any other plains birders who are blogging send me a link!