Cynara cardunculusL.

Artichoke Thistle

WFO wfo-0000013358 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Alexander Wentworth
fig. a Alexander Wentworth, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 205179736
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Ken-ichi Ueda
fig. b Ken-ichi Ueda, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203378356
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by desertnaturalist
fig. c desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205787964
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Karina Viera
fig. d Karina Viera, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199694911
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Dan Horowitz
fig. e Dan Horowitz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205522032
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Chuck Wilson
fig. f Chuck Wilson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198217022
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. g Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198290150
Cynara cardunculus, photographed by Chuck Wilson
fig. h Chuck Wilson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198559194

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 = 889 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 889 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 17 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 cardunculus (L.) Baill.
  • Carduus cynara E.H.L.Krause
  • Carduus scolymus (L.) Baill.
  • Cnicus communis Lam.
  • Cynara cardunculus subsp. cardunculus
  • Cynara cardunculus var. altilis DC.
  • Cynara cardunculus var. cardunculus
  • Cynara cardunculus var. elata Cavara
  • Cynara cardunculus var. ferocissima Lowe
  • Cynara cardunculus var. inermis DC.
  • Cynara cardunculus var. sativa Moris
  • Cynara cardunculus var. sylvestris (Lam.) Fiori
  • Cynara corsica Viv.
  • Cynara ferox Ten. ex Steud.
  • Cynara horrida Aiton
  • Cynara hortensis Mill.
  • Cynara sylvestris Lam.

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.