How to Grow Globe Thistle for Fresh and Dried Cut Flowers
(Echinops ritro) aka Echinops
Globe thistle is a large perennial producing steely blue globe shaped, spiky structures of buds with little blue flowers emerging from them. The flowers add a fun texture as fresh cut flowers and dried. Don’t worry, they’re not true thistles so they don’t hurt to handle them.
The plants tolerate drought and poor soils and are very attractive to bees and other pollinators. They’re deer resistant, too!
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Globe thistle flowers and plants
The flower globes are 1-1 in. wide. They emerge from the plant in midsummer, develop their beautiful blue color, and then each spike opens to let a blue flower out. The flower stems are sturdy and white. They’re well-branched, making each flower stem short. But they still can be used in fresh flower arrangements. See Harvesting below for exactly when to harvest for fresh and for dried use.
The plants get up to 4 ft. tall but are herbaceous perennials, dying down to a smidge of identifiable foliage. The foliage is dark green with white undersides and shaped like thistle leaves. They’re a little prickly, but not painful like Scottish thistles.
Scottish thistles (Cirsium vulgare), with the purple flower, are invasive weeds in the US and people often fear that these are similar (or even the same!) and are just as invasive. I’ve had several people tell me that they’re invasive. But they are not. They do self-sow, but it’s not much and very easy to prevent by harvesting the flowers.
Read Special Info below for more info.
How to grow globe thistles
Zones 3-8; Sun: Full; Water: regular to low
Globe thistle likes a low fertility soil with good drainage and not too much water. Once it’s established you can , after a year, you can water only when it looks stressed. And at least six hours of sun. It really is an easy one to grow.
I maintain a compost mulch around it simply for keeping the soil pores open to allow water in and to maintain some soil ecology. And I mulch with some shredded leaves in the late fall. Other than that you don’t need to fertilize these plants, that will be too much for them and they’ll be more prone to diseases.
Globe thistle can be started easily by seed. You can plant out the seedlings in late spring of early summer and get a good crop the following season. But if you want to get a head start there plants available on online nurseries. You’re not too likely to find them at you local nursery, but it’s worth a try.
Below in Sources you’ll find sources for seed and plants
How to harvest globe thistles
The sturdy white stems are so branched it’s hard to get long stems off them, unless you cut the side shoots. I like the globes so much I just make short bouquets with them so I don’t lose globes.
To cut for fresh use, it’s best to cut them just when the little flowers are just emerging or just before they emerge. When the flowers emerge, the tops come out first making a hair-like appearance. My preference is to cut them before that happens, it makes a prettier, cleaner blue spiky ball for bouquets.
For drying, cut them before or very early in the flowering phase. If you catch them later they’ll have some petals that will dry, too, and will make the globes look a little “hairy”.
No special care in drying, they’re all ready to use for dried bouquets or wreaths.
If you have more flowers than you need, letting them stay on the plant will feed many bees and other pollinators. If you’re worried about reseeding, cut the spent flowers off after blooming.
Globe thistle varieties and my pick
There are a few different species and varieties of globe thistle offered. There are differences in some, but I suspect the species and varieties get mixed up a bit. But here are the best I’ve found, sources of plants may have different names, so use photos to help.
My pick is the straight species, a good blue flower on a big attractive plant and good performance: Echinops ritro: good blue flower color and good performance overall.
There’s also:
E. ritro ‘Veitch’s Blue’: Shorter plant to 3-3½ ft. tall
E. ritro “Platinum Blue’: Smaller plant to 3 ft. tall
E. r. ruthenicus: Smaller globes
E. banaticus ‘Blue Glow’: 4 ft. plant with a darker blue flower
E. banaticus ‘Star Frost’’: White globes
Sources for globe thistle seeds and plants
Seeds:
Swallowtail Seeds
Select Seeds
Johnny’s Seeds
Plant World Seeds : Veitch’s Blue’ and more
Plants:
Annie’s Annuals and Perennials: Annie’s has been closed due to illness and reopened with a new owner. The website may not be ready for orders yet, but check it out. It will be ready by spring if not sooner.
Bluestone Perennials
High Country Gardens
Flowers to go with globe thistle
Craspedia
Brilliant blue spiky ball-shaped flowers are great for fresh and dried bouquets and wreaths.
Special info on globe thistles
Scottish thistles (Cirsium vulgare) with the purple flower are invasive weeds in the US and people often fear that these are similar and are just as invasive. I’ve had several people say that to me. But they are not invasive.
Globe thistles are a cousin of the Scottish thistle with pointy but not painful leaf spines. Scottish thistles, with their very sharp spines, are invasive plants in the US. Globe thistle can reseed to start new plants, but they’re not wind carried like the Scottish thistle is. Globe thistle seeds tend to just drop to the soil and need to be fairly vigorously shaken or rubbed to be released. So not many seeds start as new plants.
To avoid reseeding simply harvest your flowers before they set seed. And you have a very long window to get that task done. Between the time they’re ripe for flower harvesting and the time the seeds are fully ripe and ready to get shaken onto the ground, is around two months. So at least harvest them for bouquets and dried arrangements, give them as gifts, and if you have any left, compost them. At the best harvest stage there are no seeds in the pods so you aren’t spreading any seeds… which are not invasive anyway.
And please note that a common name, like thistle, can easily be confused with a different more pesky plant that contains part of the same name. This is why it’s always good to know the scientific name to know what exactly someone is talking talking about. Common names can be very misleading. Plus, there are several other plants commonly referred to as thistles, like artichokes.
