All thistles, Cirsium Mill., are considered noxious weeds, even the native ones, but only a couple that may be found in Alabama are exotic. This association with being noxious weeds has given birders a bad reputation for spreading thistles by feeding the seed to gold finches, but these seed have been rendered nonviable by toasting thus they even smell like roasted sunflower seed considering that both are in the same family. I have seen more evidence that thistle seed are spread in cattle feed considering how there were many more thistles in an isolated food plot when free ranging cattle still trampled it than now. The exotic thistles are Canada thistle, C.arvense (L.) Scop., although it is actually native to Europe where it is called creeping thistle due to being a perennial fortunately not widespread in much of the southeast including Alabama, and the bull thistle, C.vulgare (Savi) Ten., that is the large biennial thistle more familiar here. There are over 90 other native species, but only about 7 of those are found in Alabama. The flower color is often pink, but some are yellow. Thistledown was used by Native Americans for fletching blowgun darts.
Thistles are also mentioned in the Bible, but those thistles are in the related and mostly exotic genera of Silybum Adans., Centaurea L., and Notobasis Cass. Pasture thistle, C.pumilum Spreng., is synonymous with Cirsiumodoratum (Muhl. ex W. Bartram) Petr., where it is notable that William Bartram is mentioned in the authorship, but the ex denotes that the name is exclusive of what he may have called by that name likely because this authority gave a more exact description that distinguished it from other species that could have otherwise been synonymous. This thistle has a range northeast of Alabama that is centered closer to William Bartram's home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
