Meadow Thistle

Meadow thistle

Meadow thistle is a common name for several thistles and may refer to:

Meadow

A meadow is an open habitat or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non-woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as they maintain an open character. Meadows can occur naturally under favourable conditions but are often artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland for the production of hay, fodder or livestock. Meadow habitats as a group are characterized as semi-natural grasslands, meaning that they are largely composed of species native to the region, with only limited human intervention.

Thistle

Thistle is the popular name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp spikes on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles can also occur all over the plant – on the stem, and on the flat parts of the leaves. These prickles protect the plant from herbivores. Typically, an involucre with a clasping shape, similar to a cup or urn, subtends each of a thistle's flower heads. The typically feathery pappus of a ripe thistle flower is known as thistle-down.

Shades of purple

There are numerous variations of the color purple, a sampling of which is shown below.

meadow

Noun

1. A field or pasture; a piece of land either intentionally cultivated with grass or (especially) naturally covered with grass, especially one that is intended to be mown for hay or to be grazed.
2. Low land covered with coarse grass or rank herbage near rivers and in marshy places by the sea.

Verb

1. To cultivate with grass in order to produce hay.

thistle

Noun

1. Any of several perennial composite plants, especially of genera Cirsium, Carduus, Cynara, or Onopordum, having prickly leaves and showy flower heads with prickly bracts.
2. This plant seen as the national emblem of Scotland.