Our dog Casey is picking up a lot of these in her beard lately, as we've been doing more walking since the snow started leaving. I guess we've always just called them burrs, but Dan Urbanski tells us they are "burdock".

Casey was on the Pasty Cam a couple years back. It almost looks like I'm removing some of that "burdock" :o)

Great picture! Did anyone ever teach you how to make a basket out of burdock, or am I from too many generations past??

Back in my far-away youth while living in Detroit
we used to call them "pickers".

Is this burdock also the plant that has huge green leaves in the summer?

I fondly recall a time I found a patch of rhubarb that I decided to bring home and plant in the garden. The root system was amazingly long, but with effort I was able to remove most of it and carry it with pride to the backyard (o.k. front yard) garden where I planted it and watered it with pride. So you can imagine how much the long "light" summer days made me wish for the dark of night so I could sneak out there and remove this unsightly patch of burdock that had metamorphosed from my rhubarb. So, yes Alice, burdock looks a lot like rhubarb.

In my far away childhood, also in Detroit, we called them "pickers," "stickers," or, my favorite, "stickaburrs." Thanks for another great Pasty cam photo.

Ì understand that in the even more distant past they were used to comb and card wool before it was spun. Such resourceful people, our ancestors.

out in Covington we would ball up the pickers and see if we could get them tangled up real good in someone else's hair! Winter was for snowball fights and summer was picker ball fights. we had such a simple and fun childhood making rivers of water from the melting snow, looking for tadpoles to bring to school in large jars to watch them turn into frogs and waiting for Big Lake to warm up enough to jump in for the first swim. Our only instruction was "be home before the streetlights come on". I'm grateful to be a hick from the sticks--we didn't have a care in the world.

First of all, thanks to The Green Thumb for the info. There is an old picture of my sister and I carrying these huge leaves, and I thought my mom had said that they were burdock leaves.
Second, Marie, from Oklahoma, I grew up in Detroit after being born in the UP. We also enjoyed the playing in the woods and finding Trillium, violets, and lily-of-the valley in the Spring, tadpoles, playing in the puddles in the street when it rained, and having to be in "before the streetlights came on" also! Nice memory. But also, I think that maybe those were different times, or just our memories of those times are treasured. We felt like hicks too without a care in the world. We were kids. But I don't remember putting pickers in anyone's hair! Pshaw!

I'm not sure of this, but have been told that some inventive person studied this plant and came up with velcro fasteners.

When I was a kid growing up in the Keweenaw, these burdock plants were in abundance on my uncle's farm. My brother had acne, and my mom believed that drinking tea made from burdock roots would cure it. Yuk!! (It didn't work.)
When a neighbor of ours would travel across the country, he would throw these burdock seeds out the car window all across the country. He firgured if he had to deal with these pesty stickers, so should everyone. I wonder if they ever took seed anywhere?? Ha.