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Teasel
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.
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Update: June 2012
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