Cirsium monspessulanum

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Cirsium monspessulanum, photographed by Yves Bas — fig. b Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 45825816

Cirsium monspessulanum, photographed by Fabien Piednoir — fig. c Fabien Piednoir, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 151216563

Cirsium monspessulanum, photographed by aroche — fig. d aroche, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 12731540

Cirsium monspessulanum, photographed by Tim Johnson — fig. f Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139688602

Cirsium monspessulanum, photographed by Andrea Mologni — fig. h Andrea Mologni, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 164106253

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 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Cirsium monspessulanum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
France	FRA	EUROPE
Italy	ITA
Portugal	POR
Spain	SPA

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 110 in flower of 138 examined

42%

57%

97%

92%

70%

Proportion of examined Cirsium monspessulanum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	1	too few examined
Feb	0	1	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	0	1	too few examined
May	5	12	42%	19% to 68%
Jun	16	28	57%	39% to 73%
Jul	34	35	97%	85% to 99%
Aug	32	33	97%	85% to 99%
Sep	11	12	92%	65% to 99%
Oct	7	10	70%	40% to 89%
Nov	4	4	too few examined
Dec	1	1	too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Cirsium monspessulanum 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. 110 of 138 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 11 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 monspessulanus L.
Carduus montanus Pers.
Cirsium bulbosum Lam.
Cirsium compactum Lam.
Cirsium monspessulanum var. ferox Coss.
Cirsium monspessulanum var. laxum Rouy
Cirsium monspessulanum var. monspessulanum
Cirsium montanum Bubani
Cirsium paniculatum Porta
Cirsium pratense DC.
Cnicus monspessulanus (L.) Roth

Sourcesevery claim on this page

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