Cirsium vulgare(Savi) Ten.

Bull Thistle

WFO wfo-0000081703 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Alex
fig. a Alex, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205353721
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. b Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205898903
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Dutza K.
fig. c Dutza K., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205971968
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. d Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205895213
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. e Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205539441
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Andrew Skotnicki
fig. f Andrew Skotnicki, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205972625
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. g Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205521952
Cirsium vulgare, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. h Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205273143

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 10,162 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 10,162 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 63 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.

  • Ascalea lanceata Hill
  • Ascalea lanceolata (L.) Hill
  • Carduus chinensis DC.
  • Carduus divaricatus Gllib.
  • Carduus firmus Steud.
  • Carduus lanceolatus L.
  • Carduus lanceolatus var. lanceolatus
  • Carduus nemoralis E.H.L.Krause
  • Carduus vulgaris Savi
  • Chamaepeuce firma DC.
  • Cirsium abyssinicum Sch.Bip. ex A.Rich.
  • Cirsium atticum Sch.Bip. ex Nyman
  • Cirsium auriculatum E.G.Camus ex Belèze
  • Cirsium balearicum Porta
  • Cirsium balearicum Willk.
  • Cirsium britannicum Scop.
  • Cirsium crinitum var. crinitum
  • Cirsium drijeri Rchb.f.
  • Cirsium firmum (C.Presl) Arcang.
  • Cirsium fraternum DC.
  • Cirsium gerhardtii Sch.Bip.
  • Cirsium godronii Sch.Bip. ex Nyman
  • Cirsium gracile Rostr. ex Nyman
  • Cirsium judicariense Porta ex Petr.

and 39 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.

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.