Burdock

Asteraceae

LIFE FORM: Biennial

NATIVITY: Asia

VEGETATIVE CHARACTERISTICS:

Produces a large-leaved rosette in the first year and a tall, erect, multi-branched flower stalk up to 5 feet tall in the second year; leaves are large (18 inches x 12 inches), alternate and heart-shaped; under surface is light green and woolly, upper surface is darker green and smooth.

FLOWERS:

Purple, thistle-like flower clusters are produced from July through October.

FRUIT:

Flower head dry to form a bur with spiny, hooked bracts that attach to animal fur and human clothing like Velcro as a seed dispersal mechanism.

ECOLOGICAL PREFERENCE:

Grows in a wide variety of habitats, but prefers moist, rich soil; minimally maintained public parks and open space; vacant lots and rubble dump sites; woodlands that develop on abandoned open space; freshwater wetlands, ponds and streams; unmowed highway banks and median strips with frequent salt applications.

ENVIRONMENTAL FUNCTION:

Disturbance-adapted colonizer.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:

The root of is edible and cultivated comercially in Japan as gobo. The design for Velcro was based on the burs of this species. Listed by John Josselyn in New-England’s Rarities, published in 1672, under the category: “Of such plants as have sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New England.” Included by Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in his five volume herbal, De Materia Medica, which was written in the first century AD and remained in active use into the 1600s.