HoneyHQ

Thistle

Galactites tomentosaAsteraceaeAnnual

The thistles that take over Mediterranean pasture after grazing and fire, and one of the most productive nectar groups in that landscape. A thistle head is a landing platform holding dozens of accessible florets, worked simultaneously by bees, butterflies and hoverflies, and in Sardinia and Sicily the honey it produces is a named speciality.

Where not to plant it

Several Mediterranean and European thistles are serious invasive weeds in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Excellent forage in their native range and a genuine problem outside it.

Value to bees

Nectar
Very high
Pollen
High
As a honey crop
Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years
Which bees, and why
Worked by an unusually wide range of insects. The composite head lets a visitor work dozens of florets without flying, which is about as efficient as forage gets.

Short tubular florets massed on a flat head, with nectar within reach of short-tongued bees as well as long-tongued ones and butterflies.

Worth knowing
Among the most productive nectar plants in Mediterranean grassland, and one of the few that supports butterflies and bees equally well.

Flowering

In flower
May to July (northern hemisphere)

Late spring and early summer, following asphodel in the Sardinian sequence and preceding the summer drought.

When nectar flows
Generous and sustained. Individual florets open in succession across each head over days, so a single flower stays productive for a long time.
Year-to-year variation
Dependable where thistles dominate grazed and disturbed ground, which across much of the Mediterranean is a great deal of it.

What it does to the honey

Thistle nectar produces an amber honey with a warm hay-and-spice character and a faint bitterness — sitting between a floral honey and a herb honey.

Growing it

Conditions
Full sun, poor dry soil, disturbed ground. It needs no encouragement anywhere it is native.
Size
30-100 cm.
Native range
The Mediterranean basin and Macaronesia.
Suits
Meadow or wildflower area, Large gardens
  • Not a plant to introduce deliberately in most gardens — thistles self-seed vigorously and several species are listed weeds outside their native range.
  • Where thistles already occur on rough ground, leaving them to flower is a genuinely valuable decision for butterflies as much as bees.
  • The seed heads feed goldfinches through autumn, which is a second reason to leave them standing.

What it looks like

A spiny annual or biennial with white-veined leaves and rounded purple-pink composite heads surrounded by spiny bracts, the outer florets larger than the inner.

Sources

  • HoneyHQ editorial synthesis — HEKNO Ltd · HoneyHQ synthesis
  • Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide

How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.

Tools for planning planting

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