About Cirsium mohavense (Greene) Petr.
Cirsium mohavense (Greene) Petr. is a species of thistle with the common names virgin thistle and Mojave thistle. This thistle is native to the southwestern United States, where it grows in moist patches within generally dry habitats, such as desert springs. It is most abundant in the Mojave Desert, and also occurs in the southern Great Basin and other nearby areas of California, Nevada, western Arizona, and southwestern Utah. Cirsium mohavense is a biennial or perennial plant that can reach up to 2.5 meters (100 inches, or 8 feet 4 inches) in height. Its densely woolly stem branches and spreads toward the top. Its leaves are toothed to deeply lobed, woolly, and spiny, and can grow up to 60 centimeters (24 inches) long near the base of the plant. The inflorescence forms a spreading arrangement of flower head clusters, with each individual flower head generally measuring less than 3 centimeters in both length and width. Each flower head is covered in spiny phyllaries, and contains white, lavender, or pink flowers. Its fruit is an achene a few millimeters long, topped with a pappus that is roughly 1.5 centimeters long.
