Scolymus maculatus is a spiny annual plant in the family Asteraceae. It is known as scolyme taché in French, cardogna macchiata in Italian, ⵉⵙⵔⵉ in Tamazight cardo borriquero in Spanish, and escólimo-malhado in Portuguese, חוח עקוד in Hebrew and سنارية حولية in Arabic. In English it is called spotted golden thistle or spotted oyster thistle.

The plant has pinnately incised prickly leaves and prickly wings along the stems, both with a white marginal vein. The yellow flower heads stand solitary or with a few together at the tip to the stems, and subtended by more than five leaflike bracts. It is native to the Mediterranean region in southern Europe, southwest Asia, and northern Africa, and also the Canary Islands.

Description

Scolymus maculatus is a spiny herbaceous annual, biennial or perennial up to high. The stems carry uninterrupted spiny wings along their lengths. The wavy leaves are approximately ovate in shape, mostly long, with prominent white veins which are pinnately divided, alternately set along the stems, and have a dentate margin tipped with spines and a white vein all around their outline. The plant contains a milky latex and has twenty chromosomes (2n=20).

The roundish flower heads are seated at the end of the stem. Each is subtended by an involucre, consisting of more than five spine-tipped bracts between long, arranged in several rows. The inner bracts are leaflike, the outer ones short and thin with a white margin. The common floral base (or receptacle) is in diameter, conical in shape, and set with ovate papery bracts called chaff or paleae. Inplanted are dorsally compressed cypselas, each enclosed by a palea, the outer rows higher than the inner ones. There are no pappus bristles on top of the cypselas. The yellow, strap-like corolla is long, ends in five teeth, and carries some black hairs on the tube.

Scolymus maculatus is nitrophilous plant, that prefers deep, rich, but disturbed clayey soils in sunny or lightly shaded positions, such as fallowed or abandoned fields, ditches and roadsides. It generally only occurs below altitude and along the coast, where there are less than 15 frost days. In Israel it occurs in woodlands and shrublands, steppes, and desert, but also in the montane vegetation on Mount Hermon. Flowers are present between May and August. The hermaphrodite flowers are pollinated by insects.

References

  • Neglected horticultural crops - Scolymus maculatus