Yellow Thistle

Description:

Clearly a large thistle, but I can't identify it. Leaves streaked heavily with red-purple don't seem to match anything. And the color of the flower, deep reddish-maroon, isn't typical of other large thistles, which tend to be light purple. An odd Bull Thistle, maybe?

Habitat:

Along the edge of a rural road. Growing by a ditch which carries water at times, but was dry the day I took these photos. The foliage at the base of the plant looks like a giant dandelion. Each plant had, usually, one flower ... occasionally two or three ... but never clusters. Around it, grasses, buttercups, a field that looked like it was probably used to graze dairy cattle. The photos are of two or three plants, but they weren't the only ones ... there were 10 or more within just a few steps.

Notes:

For awhile, I thought maybe the thistles I photographed that day were Bull Thistles whose leaves and flowers were given an atypical color by the presence of an unusual substance in the ground. Kind of the way, supposedly, you can change the color of a hydrangea by sticking nails in the dirt around it ... I don't know if that's true, maybe just an an old wive's tail.

But that's not it. I've seen other large thistles this color throughout the region over the years. It's probably going to end up to be something really easy, but I've been fooling around with an ID for a couple of years ...