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Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🌿 Greater Burdock

Arctium lappa · Asteraceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🏔️ Mountains🍁 North America
🧠 To remember it“Burdock: the hook that invented Velcro” — as soon as a bur sticks to your sleeve, you know it's her.
Greater Burdock — Arctium lappa

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Large biennial plant with big heart-shaped leaves, dull green above and cottony-white underneath. In its second year, a sturdy stalk bears purple flower heads surrounded by rigid hooks (the famous hooked bracts that cling to fur and clothing — they inspired Velcro). Long, fleshy taproot in its first year.

  1. large heart-shaped leaves, white cottony underside
  2. purple flower heads with hooked bracts (burs)
  3. hollow, grooved stem
  4. grey-brown taproot, white flesh, up to 60-90 cm long
  5. overall large size (up to 1.5-2 m in the 2nd year)
Size50-200 cm
FloweringJuly-September (2nd year)
Habitatforest edges, embankments, pathsides, nitrogen-rich soils

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Comfrey or Foxglove (at the rosette stage, before flowering) (Symphytum officinale / Digitalis purpurea)high for foxglove (deadly), none for comfrey

To tell them apart: burdock has a cottony-white leaf underside and a hollow stalk, foxglove has a more elongated, textured leaf without this cottony feel; if in doubt with an unflowered rosette, do not harvest the root

🍽️ Eating it

Partsroot (1st year), peeled young stems, young leaves
Seasonautumn-spring (root, before bolting into flower), April-June (young stems)
Tastemild, earthy, slightly sweet root once cooked

Preparation : root peeled and cooked like salsify (Japanese "gobo" is this exact same cultivated plant); young stems peeled of their bitter bark and boiled in water

72kcalEnergy
1.5gProtein
0.2gFat
17.3gCarbs
3mgVitamin C

approx, raw root, close to USDA data for gobo (burdock root)

💊 Healing with it

traditionally depurative and diuretic, used for mild chronic skin conditions (acne, eczema)

Level of evidence : traditional use — ethnobotanical compilations (Fournier, Wikiphyto)

⚠️ possible allergy for people sensitive to Asteraceae (ragweed and wormwood family); avoid during pregnancy as a precaution

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • hooked bracts inspired the invention of Velcro by Swiss engineer George de Mestral in 1941
  • leaves used as a cooling poultice on insect bites
Sources (3)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.