Nuokkukarhiainen - Nodding Thistle

Saturday took me to many beautiful places - to an awesome manor in Eurajoki, through crowded beaches of Yyteri and wind park of Reposaari to the real Reposaari. It seems to be a very quiet place full of lovely wooden villas. There were also many interesting flowers growing, I met two new species.

The one in the picture, Carduus nutans, is a very rare flower in Finland. Yes we do have many sorts of thistles here too, but this nodding one turned out to be not so common and the strongest population in Finland is growing in Reposaari. Thistles are one of the groups of flowers which are rather difficult to identify, at least in my opinion. However it was easy to notice this is not any of those typical species I have seen earlier because they are all very erect and every flower of these was nodding more or less and had that wide collar with long spikes all around its neck.