Also 7 -burn. [f. BUTTER sb.1 + BUR sb. Conjectured to be so named because its leaves were used for wrapping butter in; cf. butter-dock, butter-leaves in BUTTER sb.1 5. See, however, quot. 1651, which suggests a different explanation.] A plant, Petasites vulgaris, with large soft leaves, growing in wet land; sometimes made the English name of the genus.
1548. Turner, Names Herbes, s.v., Petasites is called in the South partes of Englande a Butter bur.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, cclxxviii. § 1. 667. Bvtter Burre doth … bring foorth flowers before the leaues, as doth Coltesfoot.
1651. N. Biggs, New Dispens., 43, ¶ 79. From Butter-burre floweth Gum, from Chameleon bird-lime.
1673. Ray, Trav. (1738), II. 192. The leaves thereof are rough and round, as big very near as those of Petasites, call’d Butterburn in our language.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xxvi. 389. Butter-bur has vast leaves shaped like those of the Colts-foot; many … flowers collected into an ovate thyrse.
1857. Kingsley, Two Y. Ago, II. 269. A long bar of gravel, covered with giant ‘butterbur’ leaves.
1880. Encycl. Brit., XI. 634/1. What … is sometimes called ‘winter heliotrope,’ is the fragrant ‘butterbur,’ or sweet-scented coltsfoot, Petasites (Tussilago) fragrans.
¶ Erroneously: the Burdock (Arctium lappa).
1861. S. Thomson, Wild Flowers, III. (ed. 4), 306. The butterbur (Arctium lappa) has a repute in malignant fevers.
