Teasel

A ten-foot-tall teasel leans over the path as I walk this afternoon. I haven’t noticed it before. Its flower-heads are the same size as the head of a small cat.

I always thought the flowers (when dried) were used for carding wool but Charles Coates’s The Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland says that they were used for ‘teasing’ the nap on cloth. My Oxford Book of Wild Flowers says that this was woollen cloth (hence my confusion perhaps) and that it was special cultivated variety of teasel with extra-prickly bracts (flower-bearing leaves) that was used.

Goldfinches love the seeds, and if you’re lucky enough to see these little gold and red birds twittering around a plant, you’ll understand why a flock of goldfinches is known as a ‘charm’.