Asteraceae | musk thistle/nodding thistle/bristle thistle
Nodding, dark pink to rose-purple (rarely white), thistle-like, rayless flower heads along a long stalk at end of main stem and its branches; stem sometimes with a cobweb-like covering.
Habitat: waste places and fields
Flowers: head 1.5 - 2.5" wide; bracts broad, pointed, purple, outer ones curving outward.
Leaves: to 10" long, lanceolate, deeply lobed, very spiny, with bases extending up and down stem as prickly wings.
Fruit: seed-like, with long, white, minutely barbed bristles.
Thieret, J. W., Niering, W. A., & Olmstead, N. C. (2001). National Audubon Society field guide to North American wildflowers: eastern region (Chanticleer Press ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.