New Expedition—Thistle be fun!

The sunflower family includes the familiar thistles, as well as the plants that give us endive, artichoke, sunflower seeds, Jerusalem artichoke, lettuce, and tarragon.  Their flowers are often crowded together on a “platform” to produce showy displays, like those of the cultivated sunflowers.  The sunflower family is one of the largest flowering plant families with ca. 25,000 species worldwide.  Florida is home to >400 of these species.  The family is especially diverse in the state’s open pine savannas, where they add beautiful color to the late summer and fall.

WeDigFLPlants is the product of an innovative partnership between the Florida Native Plant Society and the >100 herbaria in the southeastern U.S.  WeDigFLPlants’ goal is to transcribe specimen labels from the specimens collected in Florida over the past 300 years.  To find out more, visit https://biospex.org/project/wedigflplants.  Thank you for your help!