| Author | (L.) Sprengel | |
| Distribution | Mountains and Piedmont. The gaps in the latter are likely to be filled with additional fieldwork. The Moore County record is from the PLANTS database; no specimen is at the SERNEC database.
MA to ND, south to northwestern FL and TX. | |
| Abundance | Fairly common to locally common in the Mountains, at least in the central and southern counties. Mostly uncommon in the western Piedmont and rare in the central and eastern Piedmont counties. | |
| Habitat | Open woodlands, clearings, fields, pastures, and thickets. The true native habitats in NC are not known with certainty. The Orange County specimen came from a streambank and adjacent field, New Hope Creek at SR 1009, in 1975. | |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting September-November. | |
| Identification | This is a tall (3-7 feet), fall-flowering thistle with white or whitish, densely short-hairy, undersides of leaves. The midpoint of the heads is greater than 2 cm wide (vs. less than 2 cm wide in C. carolinianum and C. virginianum). The inflorescence bracts have well-developed spines (contra C. muticum with none or spines a maximum of 0.5 mm long). The leaves are merely toothed or very shallowly lobed (vs. deeply lobed in C. discolor). | |
| Taxonomic Comments | None
| |
| Other Common Name(s) | None | |
| State Rank | S4? [S4] | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
