Coexistence patterns of two invasive thistle species, Carduus nutans and C. acanthoides, at three spatial scales

Influence of Microsite Disturbance on the Establishment of Two Congeneric Invasive Thistles

The successful establishment of invasive species has been shown to depend on aspects of the invaded community, such as gap characteristics. Biotic resistance may be particularly critical for stopping invaders at early life history stages, but new species can often invade following disturbances, which may create microsites with very different characteristics than are usually present. We examine ...

Ecology of Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans) Seed Germination for Grasslands of Temperate Climates

Musk thistle is an invasive weed that is widely distributed throughout much of North America, including grasslands in temperate climates of the midwest USA. A series of laboratory and greenhouse experiments were conducted to determine the effect of various environmental factors on germination of musk thistle seeds. In temperature-fluctuation experiments, seed germination was greater than 65% in...

Root Growth of Two Perennial Grass Types and Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans) in Temperate Grasslands of North America

Plant community associations of two invasive thistles

In order to combat the growing problems associated with biological invasions, many researchers have focused on identifying which communities are most vulnerable to invasion by exotic species. However, once established, invasive species can significantly change the composition of the communities that they invade. The first step to disentangling the direction of causality is to discern whether a ...

FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF Carduus nutans SEEDS

Carduus nutans L. is a biennial plant which is belonging to Asteraceae family known as musk or nodding thistle commonly. Carduus species includes different active ingredients like essential oil, resin, tannin, fatty oil, starch, flavonolignans, polyacetylenes. Importance of phytochemistry and chemical ecology researches increase gradually. The fat extraction was carried out by Soxhlet method wi...