Burdock: Greater Than I Thought

e6filmusere6filmuser Registered Users Posts: 3,376 Major grins

Each summer for at least the last two years, a Lesser Burdock plant has grown just on the afternoon-sunny side of some mature trees in our garden. That has been the favourite sunny spot for some of the more interesting flies, enabling me to get some good images.

This year, a Burdock plant has grown out in the full sun, further away from the trees, on the other side of the garden. I remarked to my wife that it was doing surprisingly well and she suggested that it was in better soil. True, the thistles close to it were 50% taller than those on the other side of the garden but this was rediculous. The plants of previous years had been about knee high to, maybe, waist high, but this one was towering above my head at 6ft 6" (2m) or so.

Then, when the flowers appeared, they looked rather more exotic that I remembered. The leaf stalks should have been hollow but they were solid. I was the Greater Burdock [i]Arctium lappa[/i].

I have located what looks like a rather stunted plant of Lesser Burdock [i] Arctium minus[/i].

The burdocks are closely related to the thistles but the leaves are very plain, not at all spiny.

I though the flowers merited being fairly comprehensively documenting so here they are.

The stereos are crosseye.

Olympus EM-1, (aperture priority), Olympus 4/3 50mm f2 macro, f9, 10 or 11, hand-held.

Harold

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