There around me were the vast, empty olive-groves echoing with cicadas; the moss-grown stone walls that made the vineyards into steps where the painted lizards ran; the thickets of myrtle alive with insects, and the rough headland where the flocks of garish goldfinches fluttered with excited piping from thistle-head to thistle-head. ❋ Durrell, Gerald, 1925- (1956)
All day long the happy pair enjoyed each other's company aloft, leaping from corn-ear to thistle-head, from thistle-head to poppy, and back again to corn-ear, feasting, frivolling, stalking bluebottles. ❋ Douglas English (N/A)
(Later on I counted as many as sixteen flies on a thistle-head.) ❋ Various (N/A)
And every thistle-head by the roadside holds hundreds of these sky rovers, -- imprisoned Ariels unable to set themselves free. ❋ John Burroughs (1879)
In the cages in which various Hunting Wasps, whose stratagems of war I am engaged in studying, are waiting till I have procured the desired prey -- not always an easy thing -- I have planted a few flower-spikes, a thistle-head or two, on which are placed drops of honey renewed at need. ❋ Jean-Henri Fabre (1869)
I see one side by side with the Philanthus on the same honeyed thistle-head: assassin and future victim are drinking from the same flask. ❋ Jean-Henri Fabre (1869)
I say excess, for to-day, instructed by long experience, I have quite recovered from my former fears; and, when I see a Scolia resting on a thistle-head, I do not scruple to take her in my fingers, without any precaution whatever, however large she may be and however menacing her aspect. ❋ Jean-Henri Fabre (1869)
"Oh, I don't want that; one can get it any day in England; here though, look at this lovely burnet-moth," he cried, as the blue-and-red-winged little creature settled on the same thistle-head. ❋ Unknown (1867)
The family was like an old thistle-head, withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. ❋ George MacDonald (1864)
How many such varieties might have been produced if these fringes of the Giulietta, or those already alluded to of Lucia nivea, had been repeated and enlarged; as the type, once adopted for complex bloom in the thistle-head, is multiplied in the innumerable gradations of thistle, teasel, hawkweed, and aster! ❋ John Ruskin (1859)
Meantime the definitely intended poppy, in late Christian Greek art of the twelfth century, modifies the form of the Acanthus leaf with its own, until the northern twelfth century workman takes the thistle-head for the poppy, and the thistle-leaf for acanthus. ❋ John Ruskin (1859)
Prithee, now, how many such butterflies as you suck here together on the thistle-head of royalty? ❋ Charles Kingsley (1847)
Another yellow thistle-head, C. solstitialis, Yellow Star-Thistle, recently starred as Pitkin County Land Management's weed villain of the week. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Another yellow thistle-head, C. solstitialis, tellow star-thistle, recently starred as Pitkin County Land Management's weed villain of the week. ❋ Unknown (2009)
You may often see, in late September or early October, these tramp bees passing the night or a cold rain-storm on the lee side of a thistle-head. ❋ John Burroughs (1879)
