A tall species of thistle, Onopordum Acanthium, entirely covered with white cottony down.
1548. Turner, Names of Herbes, Acanthium … maye be called in englishe otethistle … or gum thistle, or cotton thistle, because it is gummy and the leaues haue in them a thynge lyke cotten.
1611. Cotgr., s.v. Argentin, Chardon argentin, Argentine, Siluer-thistle … Cotton-Thistle, the wilde white Thistle.
1854. S. Thomson, Wild Fl., III. (ed. 2), 245. The … cotton-thistle (Onopordum acanthium), white with its woolly covering, is known to most.
