Nature Bulletin No. 586   January 9, 1960
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Daniel Ryan, President
Roberts Mann, Conservation Editor
David H. Thompson, Senior Naturalist

****:TEASEL

One of the most remarkable and picturesque plants found in Cook 
County is the Teasel. More prickly than a thistle and as completely 
armored as any cactus, it is far the most formidable. You cannot take 
hold of a teasel, anywhere, without being painfully stabbed. Even the 
leaves have fine hairs that penetrate your skin as deeply as slivers of 
glass.

Teasel is a biennial. Now, in winter, tall dead stalks of it stand erect and 
branched like a candelabra. They grew and bloomed last summer from 
plants that were in their second year. On the ground among them are 
green rosettes of large crinkled leaves. Those, and long taproots, were 
developed by teasel plants during their first year. Like similar rosettes 
of mullein and bull thistle, they stay green all winter and each will send 
up a flower stalk next spring.

An old stalk, from 3 to 6 feet tall, is tough, woody and hollow, with 
several ridges along its entire length. Each ridge is armed with short 
spines that are wide at the base and very sharp. At intervals that 
increase to 10 inches or more near the top, are opposite pairs of 
branches -- each pair projecting upward in a plane at right angles to that 
of the next pairs above and below it. At the tip of the main stem and of 
each branch is a cylindrical cone bristling with brown spines densely 
packed in diagonal rows. Curving outward from its base are several 
needle-pointed spiny prongs. Those cones were flower heads in 
summer.

Each pair of branches grew from the axils of a pair of leaves. The 
leaves are long and pointed, with jagged margins. The upper surface is 
dotted with prickles and on the underside, there are hooked spines along 
the midrib. Cattle learn to avoid them but, anyway, the juice is very 
bitter. The bases of each pair of leaves surround the stalk and form a 
cup. Country people used to believe that the rainfall collected in those 
cups was a sure cure for warts.

The teasel has its own peculiar way of blooming in midsummer. A 
golden-rod, for example, blooms first at the tip of its flowering 
branches and then downward. On a mullein the clublike flower head 
begins blooming at the bottom and thence upward. But a teasel begins 
with a band of blue, lavender or purple flowers around the middle of 
each flower head and blooms both ways. The construction of the little 
flowers is as interesting as the rest of the plant. They are pollinated by 
bumblebees and honeybees. Honey made from their nectar has a very 
fine flavor.

The common teasel, native in Europe, was grown in Germany, France 
and England for use in carding wool, raising a nap on woolen cloth, and 
making blankets fluffy. The dry bristly flower heads are drawn across 
the material by hand; or the heads, split in half, are mounted on belts or 
rollers that move across the cloth. Metal wires might tear it.

Introduced into the U.S., teasel was an important crop in central New 
York for 100 years and, later, in Oregon. It escaped and has become 
established as a weed from Maine to North Carolina and westward to 
Missouri and a few far western states. Fuller's Teasel, another species, 
has been cultivated for 2000 years in southern Europe and is grown in a 
few of our eastern states. One difference is that the spines or bracts on 
its flower heads have tiny hooks at the ends.

Patches of the common teasel occur in several places in Cook and 
neighboring counties. Several of them resulted from refuse dumped 
there by greenhouses that had teasel stalks and flower heads for sale. 
They are used as bizarre ornaments in winter bouquets and flower 
arrangements. In New England they are used by rural housewives to 
sprinkle clothes for ironing.