A man-high prickly biennial whose egg-shaped head of purple flowers opens in a band that travels up it and back down
Teasel — Dipsacus fullonum.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Teasel
Biennial · flowers July to August
Dipsacus fullonum — Caprifoliaceae
The wild teasel is the man-high biennial of damp field edges, verges and waste ground whose prickly, egg-shaped head of tiny purple flowers dries to the brown cone that stands all winter. Its paired leaves are fused round the stem into a cup that holds rainwater, which is where the genus name, from the Greek for thirst, comes from. Goldfinches work the dead heads for seed, and a cultivated relative was for centuries the tool that raised the nap on woollen cloth.
How to spot them
- ▸A tall prickly biennial to about 2 m, the stem ridged and set with downward-pointing prickles
- ▸An egg-shaped or conical head, like an oversized cotton bud, enclosed in long curved spiny bracts
- ▸Tiny purple flowers open in a band that travels up the head and then back down it
- ▸Opposite leaves fused at the base into a cup that collects rainwater and drowns insects
- ▸First year a flat rosette of spiny, wrinkled leaves; second year the flowering stem, then it dies
How to know it
Its paired leaves are fused round the stem into a cup that catches rainwater, and its genus name is the Greek for thirst
Teasel — Dipsacus, from dipsa.
Goldfinches are seen on the dried brown heads in autumn, prising out the seed
Teasel — the Wildlife Trusts note this is why the plant matters to birds.
Its epithet means 'of the fullers', from the trade that used a cultivated relative to raise the nap on woollen cloth
Dipsacus fullonum; the plant actually used in the mills was fuller's teasel, Dipsacus sativus.
Water standing in its leaf cups was collected as a folk remedy for sore eyes
Teasel.
Once placed in a family of its own, it is now put with the honeysuckles; it is a biennial that dies after flowering
Teasel — moved from Dipsacaceae to Caprifoliaceae.
Its dried heads stand all winter and are the stock material of dried flower arrangements
Teasel.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Caprifoliaceae; formerly placed in the Dipsacaceae, the scabious family
- •Dipsacus comes from Greek dipsa, thirst, for the water held in the fused leaf bases
- •fullonum means 'of the fullers'; the teasel heads used industrially to raise the nap on woollen cloth were those of the cultivated fuller's teasel, Dipsacus sativus, which has stiffer, hooked bracts
- •The Wildlife Trusts note it grows to about the height of a person, flowers July to August, and that goldfinches tease the seed from the old heads in autumn
- •A monocarpic biennial: a rosette in year one, a flowering stem in year two, then death
- •The flowers open in a ring that moves upwards from the middle of the head and then downwards from it
- •Insects drown in the leaf cups; whether the plant gains nutrients from them has been debated since Francis Darwin's experiments in 1877
- •Invasive in parts of North America, where it is called common or Fuller's teasel
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Teasel