Arctium lappa and Arctium minus
Burdock is a Eurasian biennial now common in disturbed ground around the Northeast. The long first-year root is the main food part; cultivated great burdock is the vegetable known in Japan as gobo.1
The plant spends its first year as a low rosette and sends up its tall flowering stalk in the second. Besides the root, young leaves and immature flower stalks are edible before they become coarse.1
Like salsify and scorzonera, burdock stores food in a long taproot that becomes increasingly fibrous with size and age. Cut gobo also browns readily because it is rich in phenolic compounds; those same compounds contribute substantial antioxidant activity.2
Burdock burrs travel by catching their tiny hooks on fur and clothing. After examining burrs caught on his dog, Swiss inventor George de Mestral used the same hook-and-loop idea for Velcro.3
Footnotes
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North Carolina Cooperative Extension, “Great Burdock,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩2
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Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 322. ↩
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Cambridge University Botanic Garden, “Common Burdock, Arctium minus,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩