Product Review

Considered by many in the North America and Europe as a common weed, burdock is a sturdy biennial plant reaching up to 6 feet (2 m) high, with 18 inch (50 cm) wide leaves forming a rosette at ground level, with smaller versions growing up the thick flowering stem. In mid-summer, the plant blossoms into a dense array of globular flowers with sticky bracts that cling to passing animals and peoples. These burs were in fact the inspiration behind the invention of Velcro fasters, when the inventor found them sticking to his dog after an afternoon walk and he realized that objects could be fastened together in the same fashion. The plant grows on roadsides and waste places and around field boundaries throughout Britain, Europe and North America; it is cultivated in Japan, where it is called gobo, and the root is consumed as an everyday vegetable, similar to a carrot.