There’s a theory that the tastiest things need the best defenses. If you’ve ever stepped on or brushed by a bull thistle, you’ve experienced their robust defense system. What on earth are they hiding behind all of those thorns?
A bit of research reveals that every part of thistle is edible so long as you can get past the thorns. It’s time to put that theory to the test and see how thistle tastes.
Around here it’s not too hard to find a thistle plant, and our main variety is common Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare). The seeds are wind-dispersed, and they’re liable to pop up in any corner of our land that gets decent sun. This thistle plant I’m testing is a bull thistle, and the spines are huge and rigid.
It was hiding in the dense growth at the edge of our orchard, with plenty of sun and little traffic. Given the opportunity, a bull thistle can grow to 5 feet tall, and send out multiple flower stalks.
I didn’t notice it getting quite so large until I walked by in shorts…
Thistle Root
Thistles will resprout readily if cut down, so it’s best to dig the whole plant up by the root. The root is edible, and according to one source, it tastes “like burdock root only better.”
While burdock stalks are delicious, I really can’t stand burdock root, and I think it tastes like bitter dirt. Thus, I’m not excited about cooking up a thistle root. But still, I have to know.
I chopped off the root, cleaned it up and found out that it does indeed taste just like burdock root. Not quite as much like dirt, and not quite as bitter, so I guess the description like burdock only better fits.
There’s a reason all the burdock root I harvest ends up in burdock tincture, rather than my stew pot. My verdict…technically edible, and good to know about, but nothing I’m planning on eating short of the apocalypse.
Thistle Leaves
Next up is the thistle leaves. To eat thistle leaves, all the spines need to be removed. Take a look at those spikes, most of them are about 1 cm long and surprisingly rigid. They’re quite thin, so you’d think they’d be weak and flexible, but not exactly.
Foraging books warn that you should use extreme caution when harvesting bull thistle because it can cause permanent damage to the cornea if it comes in contact with your eye. The only other plant I’ve seen such a stringent warning on regarding eye protection is hawthorn, and the thistle spines are almost as nasty. Watch out for that one, and seriously consider eye protection.
Even wearing leather gloves I managed to puncture my thumb five separate times, through the glove. It was always the same thumb, so clearly I was repeatedly grabbing it the wrong way?
The spine stuck in my thumb and stayed there so it could only be removed by removing my glove. No fun, I promise.
I tried cutting off just the individual spines to leave more of the green leafy material, but there are so many small spines along the leaf that I just kept cutting and cutting, leaving very little leaf material in the end. Practically speaking, that means the only thing left is the mid-rib in the center of the leaf.
The mid-rib is quite long on most leaves, and thick towards the base. It tasted like a mildly sweet and reasonably pleasant celery. Still, that was a lot of work for celery. After all those spines I would have hoped for something at least as nice as a sugar pea, but no luck.
Thistle Stalk
Now onto the central stalk. To get to the stalk, you have to remove all the thistle leaves. Since many of the leaves are over a foot long, I was wishing for longer gloves as I reached in to cut the leaves off with my knife.
I tried grabbing the leaves and pulling them off with gloved hands, but the spines went through my gloves a couple of times and I went back to my knife. In the end, I had a long stalk, still with a lot of spines, and a huge pile of thistle leaves.
The next step, and definitely the easiest part of this whole spiky adventure was skinning the thistle stalk.
That’s not the say it’s not spikey, look at those monsters…
Still, by pinning the stalk down at one end and then running a pocket knife along its length, the whole thing was skinned in seconds. I chopped the stalk into several shorter pieces to make it a bit more manageable, and so that it’d fit into a pot.
The stalks are quite tough, and they remained tough even after simmering in boiling water. The taste was again, a bit like celery. This time, they weren’t quite as pleasant as the leaf midribs, and there was a good bit of bitterness. I can imagine they’d add flavor and crunch to a soup if simmered long enough.
As I chopped the stalk into pieces, it bled a milky sap and it took quite a bit of pressure to get my knife through the tough stem.
I started to wonder if maybe I’d harvested it a bit too late. Perhaps it would be less bitter harvested earlier, but the yield would also be much lower.
Thistle Blossom
The last part of the thistle remaining is the flower. The thistle I originally harvested hadn’t bloomed yet, so I waited a few more weeks and found another thistle in full bloom.
It took a bit of patience because the blossoms were almost continuously covered in bees. Clearly, they’re enjoying them.
With patience, I was able to harvest a handful, and they’re actually much less spiky than the rest of the plant. I brought gloves and used the gloves to pull them off, but cutting them with gloved hands was tricky. I quickly found that the spines on the thistle blossoms aren’t nearly as sharp as those on the leaves and stalk.
I, of course, misremembered what I’d read about eating thistle flowers. I thought I had to wait until they bloomed, but once I got inside I checked again. In A Forager’s Harvest, one of my favorite foraging books, Samuel Thayer says that,
“The globe artichoke is the giant flower bud of a plant very closely related to wild thistles. It is possible (although not necessarily pleasant) to peel the bristly bracts from the outside of the thistle flower bud (well before flowering time) and expose a tiny, tender, delicious artichoke-like heart. Unfortunately, this vegetable is less than half an inch in diameter – so small that it is hardly worth mentioning except as a curiosity.”
Peeling the thistle flowers proved difficult, but I cut the smallest one I had in half and exposed something that vaguely resembled an artichoke. Still, it is about an inch in diameter, and much larger and more developed than what Samuel Thayer described. Given how much trouble I had peeling the larger version, I’d agree that it may be interesting as a curiosity, but not practical.
I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to foraging, but all in all, I’d say thistle really isn’t worth the effort except in an extreme survival situation. Even still, I’d need to have gloves on hand, and I’d guess I used up way more calories processing thistle into food than it contained.
Medicinal Uses of Bull Thistle
Given that it’s technically edible but not a great source of food, perhaps it’s best thought of as a wild medicinal. It’s been used for generations by Native American peoples, and while researching the medicinal uses I found a bit more insight into why someone might go through the effort of skinning out a leaf mid-rib.
The juicy leaf mid-ribs were used as a clean water source! They are wet, and though not spectacularly tasty, they are wet. Since water’s not exactly limited here in Vermont it hadn’t occurred to me.
Beyond its use as a water source, thistle is well known for its ability to treat swelling of joints and tendons. I was pretty impressed by reading a paper by the American Herbalists Guild that describes its use for joint issues, such as rheumatoid arthritis, especially in children. It’s also been used to treat other inflammatory conditions, such as inflammatory bowel syndrome.
The case study describes multiple cases where patients were not able to stand due to joint pain but were able to regain function after drinking a tea made from the leafy parts of bull thistle several times per day. That’s exciting and worth knowing as a potent anti-inflammatory. Still, my go-to wild foraged anti-inflammatory is wild lettuce, and though it’s also spikey, it’s much easier to handle and just as common.
Tk
Here is the PDF link to your mention of the medicinal documentation on bull thistle, which also talks about tincture therapy. alfs_bull_thistle_for_spondyloarthropathy.pdf
Travis Grimler
You did indeed harvest these late. I find the stalks taste like garden peas myself, but you should harvest them long before they set flower buds, and you should peel them more thoroughly. If you hold it up you will see at the cut end that there is the outer layer, which is greener along with some fibers in a circle around the core that separate the two pieces. I use my thumbnail to peel just inside this line of fibers and leave behind the whiter looking core. The remaining stems are tender enough to cut with my thumbnail or snap in half. Like I said, they taste a lot like garden peas, though the texture is closer to celery hearts.
Tamara
This survivalist also says that once you peel the tough dark green outer layer from the stalk it’s tender to eat. I will have to give it a try too. Thanks for the post!
http://sensiblesurvival.blogspot.com/2011/03/edible-wild-plants-bull-thistle.html
Natalie W
So I went to the trouble of cutting off the spines on 1 leaf and left a lot of leaf material. After chewing it for a bit raw , then seeing myself in the mirror, I noticed my mouth was very green, like drinking chlorophyll. Is that normal because I couldn’t find anything that alerted me to expect that. I gather most people only bothered with the mid-rib and so they didn’t experience that?
Ashley Adamant
You know, I didn’t look at myself in the mirror after so I can’t say. But it’s green and juicy, so lots of wed chlorophyll sounds normal.
Natalie W.
Ok, thanks. wondering if I can use it as a good source of natural chlorophyll when it’s in season instead of buying the concentrated form at the store. I’m pretty new to this but logic would seem to indicate that all green plants would have chlorophyll but other leafy greens don’t turn my mouth so green so I’m very interested in what makes this plant different. Seems like it would make an excellent green dye as well, lol.
Gwen D.
I would like to buy seeds or dried leaves for making tea from the cirsium vulgare bull thistle. Do you have a source for me? I want it for the medicinal benefits.
Ashley Adamant
Try strictly medicinal seeds, they’re the only ones I can think that might sell it.
Rhonda Sarver
You are the most engaging and down-to-earth wild food writer I have read so far. I’m a fan!
Lisa
I am interested in thistle uses and found your article very informative. Thank you
Erica
I’ve always read that you dry the thistle and the spines just fall off.
Joe
I think you’ve been a bit harsh on the plant to be fair. It’s not difficult at all to pin a long stem down with your foot, chop off the leaves and then cut the stem at the base. It’s not chewy and bitter at all, if you found that then you didn’t process it properly. You need to knife off the hard coating and you’ll be left with the fleshy stem that is softer than celery. It’s really no bother at all, takes about a minute, and I do it without gloves and don’t get jabbed. Also the root is really good when sliced up and fried in butter with salt and pepper
Janine
I wander of you could harvest the young buds and pickle them? Also, could you harvest the beautiful blooms and use in salads fresh or make jelly?
Libby Jane
I realize this post was from a year ago, but I just ate a young one. Way less spiny and bristly! I pulled it up with a glove, and peeled the stalk with my bare fingers. The thicker base was a little bitter, like dandelion. It was mild, juicy, and almost sweet at the tip. I think this would be worthwhile for younger plants. Like asparagus, the young shoots. Sure, the plants get six feet tall later, but they’re not half as tasty then! Thanks for the good post.
MARK C HARRIS
Wouldn’t it work to put root stalks and leaves in a strong chopper or food processor, and then drain off the liquids and pulp for use without dealing with the thorns?
Administrator
You would still need to process it to a certain extent just to get it into the chopper or food processor so I think you would still deal with the thorns. You could certainly give it a try though.
Candace
I’ve done this (put a few leaves in blender with some water). Added a small amount of lemon juice and honey and strained. Yum! All the spines come out and it’s like drinking green lemonade!
Ted M Lacy
I organic farm and scalp thistle out of the cash crop, is there a market for dried thistle heads?
Admin
Not that I know of, but milk thistle seeds are highly medicinal and are sold at most apothecaries and herbal shops.
beth
CAN OTHER TYPES OF THISTLE SEEDS BE USED IN PLACE OF MILK THISTLE FOR TINCTURES?
Administrator
According to eattheweeds.com “All thistles in the genus Cirsium, and the genus Carduus, are edible.” I would recommend research the specific type of thistle to discover the benefits.
sKatterBrainEdgirL
Yum and fun…Im learning about foraging and you are charming and informative…thanks
sKatterBrainEdgirL East Texas
Administrator
You’re welcome. So glad you enjoyed the post.
Sally H
You may not have been thrilled, but my guard donkey _loves_ thistles. She especially loves the flowers, which I have to bring from other parts of the farm because she eats the plants way before then. She does like me to dig up plants, rather than cut them, but since I’m not interested in encouraging them to spread she’s just asking me to do what I ought to anyway. The goats like thistles too, but they only get some after the donkey is busy with her own.
Ashley Adamant
That’s so interesting…our animals always eat around them so that they’re the only thing standing in a pasture. I’d love to have a thistle eating donkey!
Alan Powell
Sounds like you did harvest the flower stalk too late, further evidenced by the hollowing that had occurred. The next step would have been a white pith forming in the stalk’s center, all to support the weight of the swelling flower buds hovering well above the ground. Also worth noting that thistle flower can be used to make rennet for cheesemaking, and the several tribes chewed the flower buds for the nectar. I’m just starting to explore the rennet and buds, getting ready to harvest some in the coming days and weeks.
Krista
I try to harvest mine before they flower. I destem them (w gloves on) . put in my blender w water and pour through a nut milk bag. The juice is mild . I usually drink w added lemon juice.
Jeff
Great post! Thanks!
Administrator
You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.
Kelley
The roots actually make a very healthy and medicinal tea, especially good for the liver.