Every spring we are blessed to have purple thistles (Cirsium horridulum) blooming all along the roads and in many other sunny places as well. They’re very interesting flowers for several reasons. First, of course, is their incredible variety of textures. Not only are the flowers full of textures, but the plants are as well. If some shape can be prickly, it occurs on these plants! Their amazing colors are also pretty cool. They start out almost bright red as buds, but as they open and mature they become lighter and lighter, with the seeds being a stark white. Finally, very few animals will eat them thanks to all those spines, but the pollinators love the flowers. It’s not unusual to find bees, wasps, butterflies, and even beetles on the flowers. There were quite a few of these thistles growing in both Payne’s Prairie and Sweetwater Wetland Park when I was there last week. These plants were growing out on the prairie along the path that I took on my last stop. There was a reasonable number of them in various stages of maturity, so it seemed like a good group to photograph.