Hi, I'd best point out I'm nothing to do with Nemo the Mormon. I actually used this name on a non-LDS forum and recycled it here. They both mean "nobody".buffalo_girl wrote: ↑February 6th, 2022, 9:18 am Hey, Niemand (Nemo) ~ Is the large thistle considered an invasive weed in Scotland? I’ve always considered them beautiful & the most wonderfully scented flower. My horse ate them with careful relish when I was a child.
Here, in the Dakotas formulations of herbicide destroy every plant within miles to eradicate a single cluster of Scotch thistle.
No, not quite invasive. It's a native weed, and people do remove it, but it isn't considered a pest. We do have big problems with a few invasive weeds here - Giant Hogweed, Japanese Knotweed, Himalayan Balsam etc... the first one's really nasty.
The thistle is a national symbol because supposedly a Norseman/Viking sat on one during an ambush and alerted the Scottish soldiers of his presence. Something like that. Some people think there is a deeper link, because there used to be a tribe called the Taexali here and that their name may be based on an old name for a thistle or connected to the Dutch island of Texel. But that's dubious.
Yes, I think they are pretty when they are flowering but a nuisance most of the time... however if you're interested in preparedness, there are several parts of the thistle which are edible, including the roots, the "nuts" and so on. Coarse eating, but a food source most folk wouldn't even look at twice, like dandelions etc. By nuts, I mean the seeds at the bottom of the fluff.