Xanthium strumarium
species of plant
Xanthium strumarium (rough cocklebur, Noogoora burr, clotbur, common cocklebur, large cocklebur, woolgarie bur, Siberian cocklebur) is a species of annual plants in the flowering plant family Asteraceae. Some sources claim it originates in southern Europe and Asia, but has been extensively naturalized elsewhere. Others, such as the Flora of China and Flora of North America, state it originates in the Americas but was an early introduction to Eurasia.
Reproductive biology
The species is monoecious, with the flowers borne in separate unisexual heads: staminate (male) heads situated above the pistillate (female) heads in the inflorescence. The pistillate heads consist of two pistillate flowers surrounded by a spiny involucre. Upon fruiting, these two flowers ripen into two brown to black achenes and they are completely enveloped by the involucre, which becomes a bur. The bur, being buoyant, easily disperses in the water for plants growing along waterways. However, the bur, with its hooked projections, is obviously adapted to dispersal via mammals by becoming entangled in their hair. Once dispersed and deposited on the ground, typically one of the seeds germinates and the plants grows out of the bur.
Toxic or medicinal phytochemistry
The plant may have some medicinal properties and has been used in traditional medicine in South Asia and traditional Chinese medicine.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Xanthium strumarium” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q857159. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Xanthium strumarium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.