Botany and Ecology

Perennial. Plant large, glabrous or more or less arachnoid-hairy; root thick, containing latex; stem 30–60 cm high, rough and thick, simple or weakly branched above. Leaves coriaceous, stiff, large, oblong or oblong-lanceolate, pinnately divided or lobate, with more or less spiny-toothed lobes apically attenuate into spine, midrib thick and wide. Capitula clustered; general inflorescence (glomerule of capitula), globose-ovoid, surrounded by spiny bracteal leaves, 2–5 cm wide; bracts in individual capitula terminating into long coarse spine, exceeding capitula. Corolla purple; fruit (achenes) enclosed in a hull (sheath) formed by fused involucral bracts; nut-like “pseudo-fruit” gray or grayish-brown, about 1.2–1.5(1.7) cm long and 0.8–1.2 cm wide, apically with prickly spines. Flowering May–June; fruiting July. Caucasus, Middle Asia, dry stony slopes in foothills and as weed in nonirrigated crop fields (Shishkin and Boborov 1995).

Local Medicinal Uses

The latex is used as purgative (causes vomiting) (Sokolov 1993).

Local Food Uses

Achenes are eaten and contain oil; the young shoots and leaves are also edible (Sokolov 1993).