Cirsium lineare(Thunb.) Sch.Bip.

WFO wfo-0000009434 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Cirsium lineare, photographed by Licheng Shih
fig. a Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-05-03 / obs. 133742322
Cirsium lineare, photographed by Licheng Shih
fig. b Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133742149
Cirsium lineare, photographed by Licheng Shih
fig. c Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133741520
Cirsium lineare, photographed by Licheng Shih
fig. d Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 71154558
Cirsium lineare, photographed by 葉子
fig. e 葉子, CC0 1.0 / obs. 33355987
Cirsium lineare, photographed by 楊富鈞
fig. f 楊富鈞, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 25343708
Cirsium lineare, photographed by Licheng Shih
fig. g Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133742117
Cirsium lineare, photographed by Licheng Shih
fig. h Licheng Shih, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 133741538

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.

Native range 12 botanical countries

Regions where Cirsium lineare is native: China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, Assam, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam China North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastInner MongoliaJapanManchuriaTaiwanAssamMyanmarThailandVietnam Korea
Native distribution of Cirsium lineare, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
China North-Central CHN ASIA-TEMPERATE
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Inner Mongolia CHI
Japan JAP
Korea KOR
Manchuria CHM
Taiwan TAI
Assam ASS ASIA-TROPICAL
Myanmar MYA
Thailand THA
Vietnam VIE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 51 in flower of 61 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Cirsium lineare observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 51 of 61 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 32 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.

  • Carduus linearis Thunb.
  • Cirsium chinense Gardner & Champ.
  • Cirsium chinense var. chinense
  • Cirsium chinense var. laushanense (Yabe) Kitam.
  • Cirsium laushanense Yabe
  • Cirsium lineare f. albidum Kitam.
  • Cirsium lineare f. foliosum Nakai
  • Cirsium lineare f. lineare
  • Cirsium lineare f. oreithales (Hance) H.Koyama
  • Cirsium lineare f. pallidum Kitam.
  • Cirsium lineare f. viride Petr.
  • Cirsium lineare var. discolor Nakai
  • Cirsium lineare var. glabrescens Petr.
  • Cirsium lineare var. latifolium H.C.Fu
  • Cirsium lineare var. laushanense (Yabe) Kitam.
  • Cirsium lineare var. lineare
  • Cirsium lineare var. pallidum (Kitam.) Ling
  • Cirsium lineare var. tchefouense (Debeaux) Ling
  • Cirsium lineare var. tsoongianum (Ling) Ling
  • Cirsium lineare var. typicum Nakai
  • Cirsium manshuricum Kitag.
  • Cirsium oreithales Hance ex Walp.
  • Cirsium sinense C.B.Clarke
  • Cirsium tchefouense Debeaux

and 8 more.

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.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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