On our recent trip to Colorado we found a wonderful plant known as mountain thistle.
It is also called frosty ball and woolly thistle for obvious reasons.
It has lance-shaped leaves with half-inch long spines
and nodding heads that are very dense and hairy.
The flowers can be yellow or purple. Those we saw were all yellow.
They are found on rocky and gravelly slopes on the sunny side of mountains in the alpine and subalpine zones. We found a wonderful grouping of them on the rocky ridge between Mt. Oxford and Mt. Belford at about 13,900 feet.
Interesting plant. Some months ago I was doing mountain bike and I saw many plants that looks just like this.
ReplyDelete