Bot. [f. BUR sb.1 + DOCK sb.]
1. A coarse weedy plant (Arctium Lappa, and kindred species) common on waste ground, bearing prickly flower-heads called burs, and large leaves like those of the dock.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, cclxxvi. § 1. 664. The great Burre is called … Great Burre, Burre Docke, or Clot Burre.
1605. Timme, Quersit., III. 181. Take … of the seedes … of the burdock.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xxvi. 383. The Burdock, whose heads sometimes fasten themselves to your clothes as you pass.
1859. Tennyson, Holy Grail, 570. A bedmate of the snail and eft and snake, In grass and burdock.
1860. All Y. Round, No. 48. 510. The hooks of the burdock cling to the passing animal, and are carried … miles away.
b. Rarely applied to Xanthium strumarium (Small Burdock or BURWEED). c. Prairie Burdock, of N. America (Silphium terebinthinaceum), having leaves like those of the burdock.
2. attrib., as in burdock-leaf, -root.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 281. Take a handful of Sorrel, and lay it in a Bur-dock leaf.
1764. Gale, in Phil. Trans., LV. 245, note. A pultice of burdock-root pounded.
1872. Black, Adv. Phaeton, xix. 268. The mighty burdock-leaves … beloved of painters.
