Friends of Lopez Hill

-- "The mission of the Friends of Lopez Hill is to protect the 400 acres on Lopez Island known as Lopez Hill, and to preserve and keep it in public ownership for present and future generations."  

Native Indian Thistle

From Madron Murphy, June 2007:

Russel and I were up on Lopez Hill today and I was quite disturbed to see that someone has been pulling up native thistles. Indian thistle (Cirsium brevistylum) -- photo at right -- also known as short-styled thistle or clustered thistle-- is native to the San Juans and is an ethnobotanically significant species. Even though it grows in disturbed areas it is not nearly as common as the non-native thistles. It can be distinguished from bull thistle (C. vulgare) and Canada thistle (C. arvense) by its hairy stems and symmetry (the leaves are more balanced around the stem than in the other thistles). Please don't pull any more of them. I'm happy to identify plants for people--you can e-mail me photos or I can look at the plants in the field.

Most of the Indian thistle is right by the trail head out from Hunter's camp.  It is intermixed there with Canada thistle and elsewhere on the hill there is also bull thistle.  A nice online picture of Canada thistle is at: http://www.co.larimer.co.us/weeds/canthist.jpg  and one of bull thistle is at http://jardin-mundani.info/compositae/cirsium-vulgare-illeta6.jpg See photos below of Canada thistle (left) and Bull thistle (right).