Da Ji

Cirsium japonicum, the Japanese thistle, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the family Asteraceae, native to grasslands, roadsides, mountain meadows, and open hillsides of eastern China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, where it grows from sea level to montane elevations. The plant produces a stout, fleshy, branched taproot and ascends 50-150 cm on erect, ribbed, sparingly branched stems clothed in fine cobwebby hairs. The alternate leaves are oblong-lanceolate to elliptic, 20-40 cm long at the base and smaller upward, pinnately lobed with spiny-toothed margins and a sessile, somewhat clasping base on the upper leaves. Solitary or few-clustered, erect to slightly nodding flower heads 3-5 cm across appear at the stem tips in summer, with numerous purple to reddish-purple tubular florets emerging from a globose to ovoid involucre of overlapping, narrow, spine-tipped bracts. The fruit is a brown achene crowned by a feathery pappus, dispersed by wind.