Scotland's national flower

Usage examples of thistle.

Along the left side had once been a -track beside a ditch full of bulrushes and hemp agrimony, but this path was overgrown with thistles.

And only then, after childlike joy over the unharmed thistle had spread, after young Birken had heaped up earth over the bared roots and Lauremberg had run for water -- only after the company had thus recovered its innocence but before the usual chatter had time to start up did Simon Dach, beside whom Daniel Czepko had stationed himself, speak.

Indeed, the only advantage is to Broc, who will rid himself of the thistle in his shoe, and to the MacDonells who will gain the advantage of our strength and reputation.

The tender shoots are protected from being eaten by herbivorous animals in the same way as are the thistles and the holly, by the angles of the leaves having grown together so as to constitute prickles.

Meanwhile, the katydids went on caroling, and a covey of goldfinches fluttered into a patch of purple thistle, chattering companionably.

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs, Losing both beauty and utility.

The ingredients are a closely guarded secret, but Master Li once told me they included cassia, ginseng, dry ginger, magnolia, broomrape, angelica, plumeless thistle, kikio root, Chinese pepper, japonica, aconite seeds and root, slough grass, and cockscomb.

The moment his back was turned the long black snake glided on again, and reached the other thistle tuft, which was within a couple of paces of his return beat.

Sebastian Reyne was so prickly and standoffish, he could give lessons to a thistle!

With a little oatmeal for food, and a little sulphur for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with the one hand, and holding his Calvinistical creed in the other, Sawney ran away to his flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the tallest thistles.

A red dead-nettle, a mauve thistle, white and pink bramble flowers, a white strawberry, a little yellow tormentil, a broad yellow dandelion, narrow hawkweeds, and blue scabious, are all in flower in the lane.

Had some rascally schelm not stabbed my horse I should have swept your head off as a boy cuts thistles mit a stick.

Then again another acute and startling outbreak, a swift upgrowth of monstrous weedy thickets, a drifting dissemination about the world of inhumanly growing thistles, of cockroaches men fought with shot guns, or a plague of mighty flies.

Exceptions included the Scotch or Cotton thistle, a biennial growing up to five feet with striking, sculptured leaves, covered with white cob webby hairs and .

Ernie is a thistle whiffler and he whiffles thistles with a thistle whiffler.