Interesting thistle photo

[Tobus]

I always have one thought when I see thistles... its gotta hurt like heck to fall into that bad boy, ours grow to over 3 feet tall.

As a symbol, I love the thistle. As an actual plant, I hate it. With a passion! If I don't stay on top of them, they will take over my pastures. With this drought we've been having here in Texas, I haven't been shredding my pastures as often as I should, and I made the mistake a couple of years ago in letting the thistles get out of hand. I had acres and acres of them, growing over 7 feet tall. When I finally did shred everything, the thistle-down went everywhere. Huge clouds of the stuff, clogging up the air intake and radiator of the tractor. And worst of all, spreading its demon seed everywhere.

So for the past two years, I've had to spend countless hours out there with a backpack sprayer, trying to kill these evil things before they get big enough to bloom. It's been quite the challenge. Hopefully within the next year or two, I'll have it down to a manageable point. My horse loves eating thistles (and it's very entertaining to watch him carefully pull the purple buds off and roll them around in his mouth to eat them without hurting the inside of his mouth), but I just can't let that happen.

[Mike_Oettle]

Thanks for that bite of reality, Tobus.
Indeed the thistle is a nasty piece of work. But then that is precisely how it came to be the symbol of the Scots!
Regards,
Mike