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This Wednesday’s Weed is common burdock, Arctium minus! This plant is invasive where I live in Washington State, but although a crop weed, it’s edible and helpful to native wildlife where it belongs in Europe and Asia. Honey bees are very fond of this plant, and rely on it for nectar!

Burdock has a large edible taproot that can be eaten raw or soaked in water, or pickled. The young flower stalks (and even young leaves) can also be eaten after peeling, and are good both raw and boiled. It does have a bit of a strong flavor, and boiling can help reduce that.

As its name would suggest, burdock forms large burrs in the fall, which attach to animals and birds to aid seed dispersal. Sometimes, this can even entrap and harm smaller animals, unfortunately, and the burrs can hurt even a larger animal that’s unable to remove them from their fur. There are a few good things about the burrs, though. For one, they inspired George de Mestral of Switzerland to create Velcro after seeing them get stuck on his dog! Plus, without burrs, we wouldn’t have the Burryman festival in Edinburgh, where a man gets entirely covered in burrs and paraded seven miles through South Queensferry while getting absolutely smashed on whiskey he’s offered along the way.

#Arctium minus #burdock #lesser burdock #common burdock #weeds #invasive plants #wednesday's weed #ethnobotany