Centaurea calcitrapaL.

purple star-thistle

WFO wfo-0000137211 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. a Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205783310
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Michael Warner
fig. b Michael Warner, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200907004
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Santiago Martín-Bravo
fig. c Santiago Martín-Bravo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203675017
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Denys Vynokurov
fig. d Denys Vynokurov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201992878
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. e Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196370066
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by carnifex
fig. f carnifex, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202918243
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. g Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188722720
Centaurea calcitrapa, photographed by Davide Puddu
fig. h Davide Puddu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188814018

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 562 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 562 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 24 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Calcitrapa angusticeps (H.Lindb.) Holub
  • Calcitrapa calcitrapa Hill
  • Calcitrapa cilicica (Boiss. & Balansa) Holub
  • Calcitrapa hippophaestrum G.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.
  • Calcitrapa hybrida Sweet
  • Calcitrapa hypophaestum Gaertn.
  • Calcitrapa lanceolata Lam.
  • Calcitrapa myacantha (DC.) Cass.
  • Calcitrapa phoenicea Sweet
  • Calcitrapa stellaris Hill
  • Calcitrapa stellata Lam.
  • Calcitrapa vulgaris Bernh.
  • Centaurea adulterina Moretti ex DC.
  • Centaurea angusticeps H.Lindb.
  • Centaurea calcitrapoides L.
  • Centaurea carduifolia Salisb.
  • Centaurea cilicica Boiss. & Balansa
  • Centaurea devauxii Boreau ex Nyman
  • Centaurea horrida Ten.
  • Centaurea hybrida Chaix
  • Centaurea macroacantha Guss.
  • Centaurea myacantha DC.
  • Centaurea penicillata Delile
  • Centaurea trichacantha Willd. ex Spreng.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.