echinops...what's their deal?

I planted four eensy pint pots of globe thistle (echinops) in April. I'd understood them to prefer poor soil, drier conditions, and lots of sun, but I thought I'd give them a shot anyway. Fast forward to July-August, and they're sporting large rosettes of grass-green foliage. Their leaves are plentiful and enormous. But...1) the foliage isn't the color I'd expect to see on a globe thistle--it's too green and lush, and 2) there's no sign of any flower stalk developing. Just leaves, leaves, and more leaves. I have clay soil and this has been a cool, wet summer, but under those circumstances I'd expect floppy, yellowing plants. Not mounds of leaves two feet across. Some individual leaves are a foot long--this doesn't look like a sad plant.

I'm thinking maybe I just don't know very much about echinops. I'd understood them to have grayish leaves with long stalks topped by round flowerheads and to bloom in late summer. Given their size, I'd have thought they'd at least start sending up stalks by now, and the foliage really doesn't look at all like what I'd heard described. What is up with these plants???

If anybody grows echinops and is familiar with their habits, please share your thoughts. I'm guessing my soil's richness is probably responsible for some of this, but I'd like to know if I can ever expect them to flower, or if they'll just go on adding leaves forever.

If you could post a picture I'm sure someone could tell you if you really have Echinops or not. Some of them do have foliage that's green rather than silver--here's one example http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/86034/ So I'd look at the leaf shape and see if it matches or not vs focusing just on the color. Some perennials won't bloom their first year in the ground so I wouldn't necessarily worry about that part, hopefully next year they'll give you some flowers if they don't this year.

I don't grow Echinops so I don't know if this is the case for them, but some plants that do well in lean, dry soil will still do fine if you give them rich soil and more moisture--they might even grow bigger and lusher than they would in a drier less rich soil, although often they will tend to be shorter-lived in that type of conditions than they would be in a drier garden.

I've grown about half a dozen Echinops (globethistles), E. ritro and cultivars,
E. bannaticus cultivars and an E. sphaerocephalus cultivar. The only one I've found to be very hardy and vigorous is an old E. ritro that I bought from a local horticultural society as a root. It is easy to divide and I've spread it around over ten or so years. It is the largest and tallest of the Echinops I've grow and it must be a pretty good nectar plant, because the bees love it. It competes very successfully in mixed perennial beds and benefits from division every number of years or so, as many perennials do.
In all Echinops I've seen, I think, an individual globe-type flower forms at the top end of a leafed stalk. In my good old Echinops, there's up to four short branches, with a few small leaves, towards the top of the a main stalk, each also having a flower.The leaves get smaller from bottom to top of the four or five (+) foot plant. The leaves are a darkish (blueish?) green.
All my beds are clay upgraded with organic matter. I grow quite a number of different perennials in mixed perennial beds. I'm not sure why I'm relatively unsuccessful with most Echinops; maybe they are shaded out by other perennials, maybe the newer ones are not very long lived, maybe the soil is too rich (though I tend not to believe this).
In the Echinops I lost, I never noticed any sign of a problem. They just never grew very large over a few years and just never came back after a winter.
As to my very very successful old Echinops ritro, I take this to be a case where an older form is a much better (e.g. more robust, longer lived) plant than more recently available, more recently breed, and maybe fancier forms.
At this time, the blue globe flowers are still greenish and have not reached their full size.

I'll try and get a photo, but I am pretty sure the plants are some variety of echinops. They have oblong, deeply cut leaves edged with tiny spines, and the leaves and stems are starting to develop prickly green-grey fuzz. They definitely aren't shy about putting out lush layers of leaves--since they're making such large leaves in such dense layers, that could be why their stalks aren't that tall yet. If I give them time and they keep growing this way, they will be giant monster echinops that frighten children.

I've read that sometimes plants preferring poor dry soil will go buck wild with leaf production if they get their roots into rich clay, and will cheerfully grow ridiculous amounts of big leaves but no flowers. Thoughts?

The description of the leaf matches my old Echinops ritro, except there is no fuzz (at this time), nor on the stem. Some of the flowers are turning blue and a few of the points making up individual globes beginning to star out - beginning to observe things I had not before - hope this is at least somewhat clear!)). Also, the leaf is so cut that I would not describe it as oblong. Could add that the bottom of the leaf is whitish, not bluish-green as is the top.

Leaf versus flower production does involve macronutrients (elements N.P.K). My only real experience is with a wide variety of perennials. I've never noticed the sort of thing you talk about in the last paragraph. As said above my flower beds are organic material upgraded clay. Certainly shading can make full sun perennials look very straggly.

Your description of the plant, Tigrelily, is excellent, but a picture, or two, would really help.