Greetings and Salutations to all you intrepid gardeners out there, welcome back to another installment of the Forage Foods series on Lost In The Farmer’s Market. As you might already know the current Geo-Political situation coupled with inflation and supply shortages has prompted a series on foods you can forage for just in case things go sideways. Even if they don’t, forage foods may have added nutritional benefits and may also have medicinal benefits that can help you out.
Horrible Thistle has got to be the most Metal Wild plant I've ever seen. Thorns on thorns on thorns, it's the epitome of thorn-ception. This thing is set to defend itself against anything short of strong herbicide or a nuclear bomb. 
I encountered this lone but quite epic specimen on Maracco Drive which is a service road for I95 in Fayetteville. 
Even the flower's calyxes are seriously well defended.
Common Name: Horrible Thistle
Other Common Names: Yellow Thistle, Bristle Thistle, Horrid Thistle, Purple Thistle, Spiny Thistle, Bull Thistle.
Botanical Family: Asteraceae (The Daisy Family)
Botanical Latin Name: Cirsium horridulum var. vittatum (sometimes also Cardulus spinosissimus)
Season to Harvest: Spring and early summer in both the first and second years of growth.
Habitat: This thistle is often found on the edges of salt marshes but may often be found in pastures, in sites with soil disturbance and along roadsides.
Parts to Harvest: All thistles in the genus Cirsium are edible; however it takes special methods to extract the edible parts. What you want in the first year is young soft leaves, young less-spiny stems and the roots and flower stalk in the second year.
Poisonous Lookalikes: Sometimes Horse Nettle (Solanum carolinense) is mistaken for this plant at a glance; however, close inspection will easily reveal the difference. Horse Nettle is a nightshade and its five-petaled flowers and bright yellow stamen are a dead giveaway. Additionally Horse Nettle has softly fuzzy leaves and comparatively few spines, it’s fruits are green and look like tiny immature tomatoes and ripen to a yellow-orange color. Horse nettle is poisonous, all parts contain solanine and it is most potent in the autumn.
Related Edible Species: Cirsium horridulum var. horridulum is known to have a rage from Maine to Guatemala, C. h. var. megacanthum is known to have a range from the Florida Panhandle into Texas and Oklahoma.
Description: Horrible Thistle is a tall branching annual or sometimes biennial with large purple-red colored flower heads and very spiny clasping leaves. In a given season it can grow up to five and half feet tall and its leaves can be up to two feet long. Rarely the flowers can be yellow, but this is very uncommon and may be due to environmental conditions or a nutrient situation. This plant does have a large taproot and its fleshy side roots can produce new shoots allowing this plant to colonize areas and asexually reproduce itself to a limited extent.
How to Harvest: Let me start by saying harvesting anything from this plant is an exercise in difficulty, a mature specimen will be absolutely covered in spines. Ironically the Latin specific epithet ‘Horridulum’ basically means ‘somewhat rough’. Yeah it’s somewhat rough if you are into sadomasochistic activates. Someone even went so far as to suggest this plant was clearly Chuck Norris’s preferred toilet paper because it’s the only plant that put up a respectable fight. Jokes aside, harvesting from this plant is all about timing and making sure to wear protective equipment. Unlike other Thistles, Horrible Thistle is not a perennial which means you have at most two years to get whatever you are going to get out of the plant and in reality you probably will only get one year out of it. The key to harvesting really is the timing. Extracting soft new leaves is best done in the spring as the plant comes out of dormancy or well after a new plant has germinated. Getting at young stems is much the same but it may take longer because you need them to be a bit bigger. What you want to do is use a knife or some pruning snips to remove all the spines present on the leaves. The stems will need to be peeled or, you can use a knife to remove the skin and with it the spines to get at the edible core. This is the same process used to get to the edible core of the flower stalk. The fleshy roots can be harvested, peeled and also used in cooking as a root vegetable.
Recipe: Once you’ve gotten the spines off the turning things into food part is pretty easy, the de-spined leaves and stems can be used raw in a forage salad but may be somewhat bitter. You can boil the greens and stems for about fifteen minutes with at least one change of water to remove any bitterness that may be present. This cooked mix of stems and leaves can be served as a side dish for a larger meal. You can also slice the roots into shapes like french-fries and fry them until golden brown. Fried Thistle roots should be served salted and with butter and seasonings. For a long-term food solution the roots can be boiled for several hours until they are mush and the you allow them to dry out and grind them into a flour substitute.
With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.
For those of you wondering what plants are going to be at the market this weekend here is the list.
Garden Stuff: ($3.00)
Tomato – Sungold
Tomato – Chocolate Cherry
Tomato – Glacier
Tomato – Mountain Pride
Tomato – Paul Robeson
Tomato – Purple Cherokee
Tomato – Black Krim
Peppers – Carolina Reaper (limited item)
Peppers – Trinidad Scorpion (limited item)
Peppers – Ghost
Peppers – Cayenne
Peppers – Anaheim
Peppers – Bell
Okra – Red Burgundy
Okra – Jing Orange
Okra – Baby Bubba
Basil – Rutgers DMR Devotion
Castor Bean – Zanzibar
Roselle
Marshmallow
Ground Cherries
Wonderberry
Coming Soon:
More TBA!
How to stay in Contact with Us!
Our group’s online presence has migrated to Nextdoor.com. All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.
Also please take a gander at the Youtube version of this blog:
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Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClairs General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on May 19th between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.
