Medicinal Monday - Yellowspine Thistle

This spiny biennial herb has a single flower head that resembles a brightly colored snowflake.  The beautiful blossoms of this plant are a stark contrast to the rest of it which is covered in stout sharp spines. Yellowspine thistle is especially important medicinally to the Zuni living in western New Mexico and to the Kiowa, the indigenous people of the Great Plains that migrated southward to the Southern Plains.  

About Yellowspine Thistle

The scientific name of yellowspine thistle is Cirsium ochrocentrum.  It is native to the central United States and has spread to California and Mexico. Yellowspine prefers a dry sandy soil and grows in prairies, pastures, grasslands, and woodland clearings.  Today it can often be found on roadsides. It is a biennial (or short-lived perennial) that spreads by creeping taproots and seeds.  There can be as many as twenty white stems that are covered in wooly hair sprouting up from one crown root.   The leaves are irregular lobes with sharp yellow spines.  The bright showy flower head has a yellow spot in its center before it blooms from May-August.  The color of this urn-shaped flower ranges from pink, or white to pale purple.  Yellowspine flowers attract insects that help spread the pollen this herb makes.  The flowers also produce a seed that is covered by a smooth brown fruit that is topped with a fluffy white plume.  It's leaves, flowers and stems branch out in wings and are covered in very sharp, stout spines.  

Medicinal Uses

The Kiowa boil the flowers of this species in water in order to make a preparation to treat burns and skin sores; the roots were used for food.  They also used the flowers to cover fresh graves in order to deter wolves from digging up corpses.

 The entire plant is diaphoretic and diuretic. The Zuni made an infusion of the entire plant in cold water and let it sit overnight.  In the morning the water was drunk to treat syphilis. They also use a root infusion taken three times a day as a treatment for diabetes. The Zuni also made an infusion of the root that would be taken by both partners as a contraceptive.

Did you know...

Many people consider thistles in general to be undesirable weeds.

Yellowspine thistle is considered a weed in California and Northwestern New Mexico.

Yellowspine thistle is in the Aster family.

Its scientific name comes from the Greek word, Cirsium,  the Greek name for thistle and ochrocentrum meaning light yellow and prickle.