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Chenopodiaceae family

Prickly Russian Thistle Salsola tragus

Late-season nectar — Flowers in a late-autumn window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable late forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).

Prickly Russian Thistle is an introduced annual herb, found in Canada, Hawaii, and the lower 48 states. It blooms May – Nov.

⚠ Invasive here — plant a native instead USDA + GBIF

Prickly Russian Thistle is flagged invasive in the U.S. These natives fill a similar niche — same growth habit, bloom season, height, and region — so you keep the look and feed local wildlife instead of spreading a problem.

Bluebell Bellflower
Native
Bluebell Bellflower
Campanula rotundifolia
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Bog White Violet
Native
Bog White Violet
Viola lanceolata
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Spiny Amaranth
Native
Spiny Amaranth
Amaranthus spinosus
●●○○○
Slender Amaranth
Native
Slender Amaranth
Amaranthus viridis
●●○○○
Matched on growth habit · bloom months · mature height · shared U.S. range (USDA + GBIF) — a starting point, not a prescription.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 4 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
Lifespan
Annual
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · May – Nov — 971 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~11 caterpillar species

Salsola supports ~11 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus for introduced plants — native genera typically support far more.

Recorded feeding on Salsola in North America, including:

Agrotis ipsilon · Dark Sword-Grass Agrotis orthogonia · Pale Western Cutworm Brephidium exilis · gossamer-winged butterfly Cingilia catenaria · Chain-Dotted Geometer Coleophora klimeschiella · Russian Thistle Casebearer Coleophora parthenica · Russian Thistle Stem Miner Moth
+ 8 more species →
Discestra trifolii · owlet moth Euxoa brevipennis · owlet moth Euxoa catenula · owlet moth Euxoa costata · owlet moth Euxoa dargo · owlet moth Euxoa detersa · Rubbed Dart Euxoa laetificans · owlet moth Euxoa ochrogaster · owlet moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees 59 bee visitors
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (Smith et al. 2024)
Wildlife & visitors 1 bird · 1 mammal · 5 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Prickly Russian Thistle — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 bird and 1 mammal species (fruit, seed, browse):

Plectrophenax nivalis · Snow Bunting Dipodomys stephensi · Stephens' Kangaroo Rat

5 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers:

Brephidium exilis Junonia coenia · Common Buckeye Schinia tertia Hyles lineata · White-Lined Sphinx Spoladea recurvalis · Banded Sable
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (21) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[11] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[13] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[14] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[17] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[18] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[19] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[20] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[21] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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