Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Asterales > Asteraceae > Arctium > Arctium minus

Arctium minus (Common Burdock)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Arctium minus, commonly known as lesser burdock, burweed, louse-bur, common burdock, button-bur, cuckoo-button, or wild rhubarb, is a biennial plant. This plant is native to Europe, but has become an invasive weed in Australia, North and South America, and other places. Lesser Burdock produces purple flowers in its second year of growth, from July to October. Outer bracts end in hooks that are like Velcro. After the flower head dries, the hooked bracts will attach to humans and animals in order to transport the entire seedhead.
View Wikipedia Record: Arctium minus

Infraspecies

Arctium minus batavum
Arctium minus f. purpureum
Arctium minus minus
Arctium minus pubens

Attributes

Edible [1]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [1]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [1]  Although no reports of toxicity have been seen for this plant, some caution is advised due to the following report for the closely related A. lappa; Care should be taken if harvesting the seed in any quantity since tiny hairs from the seeds can be inhaled and these are toxic;
Lifespan [1]  Biennial
Pollinators [1]  Bees, Lepidoptera, Bats
Structure [3]  Herb
Usage [1]  A fibre is obtained from the inner bark and is used to make paper. It is about 0.9mm long; The stems are harvested in late summer, the leaves are removed and the stems steamed in order to strip off the fibre. The fibres are then cooked for two hours in soda ash before being put in a ball mill for 2 hours; The resulting paper is a light tan/ brown colour;
Height [1]  39 inches (1 m)
Light Preference [2]  Mixed Sun/Shade
Soil Acidity [2]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [2]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [2]  Mostly Dry
View Plants For A Future Record : Arctium minus

Protected Areas

Predators

Providers

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Hyaloperonospora parasitica[5]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 2ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 3Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 4Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 6New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 7Robertson, C. Flowers and insects lists of visitors of four hundred and fifty three flowers. 1929. The Science Press Printing Company Lancaster, PA.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0