Basket-Flower

Today’s featured plant is basket-flower (Centaurea americana). This is another one of the thistles that barely hangs on at the CB. For one thing, it’s prickless, huh-huh, so the dang dear eat it. Ma! Crumby can scarcely believe there is no actual word or spell, prickless. Or prickleless either for that matter.

Centaurea, the genus, is mostly a bunch of introduced European weeds including the unusually nasty Centaurea melitensis which you may know as the Malta Star Thistle, a lovely plant.

This year at the CB we have two basket-flowers, up from zero last year. So this is another one we need to collect seed from. Trouble is, getting seed from this one is even harder that getting seed from Cirsium texanum.