Greater Burdock - Arctium lappa

A tall plant to 1.5 metres with large (to 50 cm) heart shaped basal leaves with solid stalks. Flowers globose purple 20 to 25 mm (35 to 42 mm in fruit). The flower heads are borne on long stalks up to 10cm and the spiny outside bracts are shiny golden green (never tinged purple).

Lesser and Wood Burdock

In flower, the head is more or less corymbose (i.e the lower flowers have longer stalks, so that the inflorescence is virtually flat-topped).  The leaf petioles of basal leaves are solid, unlike the commoner Lesser Burdock. It can have glabrous or hairy flowers

A photograph of the flower head; if not in flower, evidence that the basal leaf petioles have been checked

Rough grassy places, hedgerows, roadsides, and waste ground.

July to September.

Biennial.

Fairly frequent in England south of the Humber.

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 65 of the 617 tetrads.

In the VC55 checklist (Jeeves 2011) it is listed as Alien (archaeophyte); scarce but probably under-recorded.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but improved recording since then has meant it is found in more sites than previously thought, so it doesn't meet the criteria for the current RPR (Hall and Woodward, 2022)