Lookee-Likees : Other, but dead, thistles. Carline Thistle looks like this when vibrant and alive.

Uniquely identifiable characteristics : (For a thistle), the straw-coloured bracts with a deeper straw-coloured centre containing a concentric ring of purple florets.

For a thistle it is quite short, usually no taller than about a foot but can reach 60cm high. It prefers to grow on limy soils amongst grass but seems equally at home on the slacks of older sand dunes. Also found on dunes or coastal cliffs up to 455m high!

Carline Thistle is the only member of the Carline Genus (at least so in the UK). Most, but not all, other thistles are either of Genus Cirsium or Carduus. It can be either biennial taking two years to mature into the flowering stage or it can be monocarpic flowering only once then dying. All belong to the very extensive Daisy Family.

A POLYACETYLENE Both Stemless Carline Thistle (Carlina aucalis) (where it was first found) and Carline Thistle contain the acetylide Carlina Oxide or Carlinoxide (furylbenzylacetylene), which is the main compound (85% - 90%) of the essential oil from the plant which has a long history of medicinal use in Europe due to its anti-microbial properties. It is active against two strains of MRSA and a number of other difficult infections. It is stomachic, carminative, diaphoretic and an antibiotic.

The flower head was once used as a humidity gauge because the bracts close in the higher humidity typical of impending rain.