Cirsium microspicatum var. kiotoense ("Oharameazami")

Japanese name: オハラメアザミ （大原女薊）
Scientific name: Cirsium microspicatum var. kiotoense

[Overview]
A perennial 1–2 m tall, found at the edges of deciduous summergreen and evergreen forests in low mountains.
The stem rises obliquely, branches from around the middle, and the branches spread out at wide angles.
The upper part of the stem has brown hairs and cobwebby hairs.
There are basal leaves and stem leaves; the basal leaves have withered by flowering time.
The stem leaves are alternate, broadly ovate to broadly elliptic, 21–38 cm long and 11–18 cm wide, and are pinnately divided into 2–7 pairs of lobes, or rarely undivided with toothed margins.
The upper surface of the leaves often has white blotches along the veins, and the underside has cobwebby hairs.
The leaf margins have spines, and the base of the leaf stalk does not clasp the stem.
Many pale reddish-purple flower heads are borne at the stem tip in a raceme-like to corymb-like arrangement, on thick stalks 0.5–5 cm long.
The involucre is narrowly cylindrical, 1.3–1.5 cm long and 0.6–1 cm wide, purplish brown to green, with cobwebby hairs.
The involucral bracts are in 11–12 rows and are pressed closely together overall; the bracts usually have well-developed glands and are markedly sticky, but in some plants the glands are vestigial and the bracts are not sticky.
The margins of the involucral bracts are not membranous.
The fruit is an achene with white pappus.

[Notes]
The name derives from the plant's discovery in Ohara, Kyoto.
It had been treated as a variety of Azuma-yama-azami, but has been revised to an independent species.

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