I don’t expect others to recognize these cotyledons, but I’ve been tending a colony of Short-styled Thistles here since I started these about 19 years ago. The moderately broad white central vein with side veins on these elliptical leaves are fairly distinctive. I also noticed that another species of plant now germinating, with similar cotyledon shape, has a tall (~2 cm) stalk, and no evident vein marks, while my Cirsium brevistylum cotyledons have no stalk that would now hold the cotyledons above the ground. I am thrilled to see the new generation is now coming up after the late summer rains! The dead mother plant is less than 3 feet away. I added 2 photos of the dead mother plant as habitat.

For anyone who might be curious about the Lincoln Park plants that the seed for this seedling came from:
I would add that I started the colony of C. brevistylum at Lincoln Park, that the seed of the plant in this observation came from, in about 2005 with seed from the foothills of the Olympic Mts, south of Sequim. So the gene stock could be called "north Olympic Mt foothills (somewhere under 2,000') gene stock", rather than from a longer persisting Lincoln Park population. With an average of a bit over 2 years per generation for this species (the number of years to flower, set seed, and die is variable, a minority setting seed and dying within one year of germinating), the seed source plant for these seedlings would have been from self seeded Lincoln Park plants for about 8 generations, and I count a plant as more adapted to a location, and more "wild", with every generation it is self-seeded there. (If a plant was only self-seeded iNaturalist calls a plant "wild" even if its parent wasn't self seeded.)

This summer someone pulled out most of my flowering Short-styled Thistles in Lincoln Park, but the mother plant in this observation wasn't pulled, and I collected many seeds from other plants before they were pulled up. Many 1st year rosettes were also pulled. I'm not sure if it was misguided, or malicious, but it felt malicious, so I am especially pleased that another generation has started, in spite of the loss of most of this year's generation of mother plants.

Lots of very iffy bracting on this plant so I think a hybrid, in the N-side hedge along this road. Main parents around were C. silvatica and C. sepium with some C. soldanella & C. arvensis further off.