Cirsium arvense

Cirsium arvense is a species of Cirsium, native throughout Europe and northern Asia, and widely introduced elsewhere. The standard English name in its native area is creeping thistle.

It is a herbaceous perennial plant growing 30–100 cm, forming extensive clonal colonies from rhizomes that send up numerous erect stems each spring, reaching 1–1.2 m tall (occasionally more).

Stems are green smooth and glabrous (having no trichomes or glaucousness), mostly without spiny wings. The leaves are very spiny, lobed, up to 15–20 cm long and 2–3 cm broad (smaller on the upper part of the flower stem).

The inflorescence is 10–22 mm diameter, pink-purple, with all the florets of similar form (no division into disc and ray florets). The flowers are usually dioecious, but not invariably so, with some plants bearing hermaphrodite flowers. The seeds are 4–5 mm long, with a feathery pappus which assists in wind dispersal.

There are two varieties:

• Cirsium arvense var. arvense. Most of Europe. Leaves hairless or thinly hairy beneath.
• Cirsium arvense var. incanum (Fisch.) Ledeb. Southern Europe. Leaves thickly hairy beneath.

As a subclassification of the "Eudicot" monophyletic group, Cirsium is a "true dicotyledon". The number of Pollen grain furrows or pores helps classify the flowering plants, with eudicots having three colpi (tricolpate).

C. arvense is a C3 carbon fixation plant. The C3 plants, originated during Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras, and tend to thrive in areas where sunlight intensity is moderate, temperatures are moderate, and ground water is plentiful. C3 plants lose 97% of the water taken up through their roots to transpiration.

The seeds are an important food for goldfinch and linnet, and to a lesser extent for other finches. Creeping thistle foliage is used as a food by over 20 species of Lepidoptera, including the painted lady butterfly and the engrailed, a species of moth, and several species of aphids.


The flowers are visited by a wide variety of insects (the generalized pollination syndrome).

The species is widely considered a weed even where it is native, for example being designated an "injurious weed" in the United Kingdom under the Weeds Act 1959. It is also a serious invasive species in many additional regions where it has been introduced, usually accidentally as a contaminant in cereal crop seeds. It is cited as a noxious weed in several countries; for example Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Many countries regulate this plant, or its parts (i.e., seed) as a contaminant of other imported products such as grains for consumption or seeds for propagation. In Canada, Cirsium arvense is classified as a primary noxious weed seed in the Weed Seeds Order 2005 which applies to Canada's Seeds Regulations.


Control methods include:
cutting at flower stem extension before the flower buds open to prevent seed spread. Repeated cutting at the same growth stage over several years may "wear down" the plant.
Applying herbicide: Herbicides dominated by phenoxy compounds (especially MCPA) saw drastic declines in thistle infestation in Sweden in the 1950s. MCPA and Clopyralid are approved in some regions.

Orellia ruficauda feeds on Canada thistle and has been reported to be the most effective biological control agent for that plant. Its larvae parasitize the seed heads, feeding solely upon fertile seed heads.