Experimenting with hormone spray on the nodding thistle had started to happen, both with liquid and dust. Hawke’s Bay was one area where the variegated thistle thrived and, if left unchecked ...

though nodding thistle can have whitish leaf margins at times. Variegated thistle has much more white streaking in the leaves than any of these thistles. Once flowering occurs, confusion between the ...

the winged thistle has the typical prickly rosette of a thistle species, though it tends to have some faint whitish venation in leaves, but not as strongly as in variegated thistle (Silybum marianum).

While we’re yet to conduct a full ecological inventory, we already know it’s teeming with rare species like Hill’s Thistle and the Variegated Meadowhawk, alongside unique alvar grasslands ...