A prickly wild plant with purple or pink spiky flowers, often considered a weed.
From Old English 'thistel,' from Germanic roots. The plant was called 'thistle' because of its sharp, needle-like thorns (from a root meaning 'to pierce').
Scotland adopted the thistle as its national flower partly because when Viking invaders tried a surprise nighttime raid barefoot, they stepped on thistles and cried out, warning the Scots—it literally saved the country once!
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