Sow has often chosen historic themes and heroic characters—he has completed a 35-piece work about the Battle of Little Big Horn, a series on Zulu warriors and a bronze statue of Victor Hugo.

The shape of the flower head tends to differ as well, and the leaves of young sow thistle plants tend to have a large terminal lobe, unlike hawksbeard. As with the prickly sow thistle and hawksbeard, ...