cocklebur

English

From cockle +‎ bur.

cocklebur (plural cockleburs)

Any of the coarse composite weeds of the genus Xanthium, with a prickly fruit.
- 1916 September 16, W[illiam] Scheppegrell, “Direct and Indirect Hay-Fever: Preliminary Report of the Research Department of the American Hay-Fever-Prevention Association on the Etiology of Hay-Fever”, in George H[enry] Simmons, editor, The Journal of the American Medical Association, volume LXVII, number 12, Chicago, Ill.: American Medical Association, pages 862–863:
  Fig. 1.—Spiculated pollens of ragweeds (ambrosias) low in protein. […] In the cocklebur (Xanthium americanum) and the rough wild elder (Iva ciliata), the spicules are shorter, being 0.7 and 0.5 microns, and the reaction is proportionately less active than with the ragweeds (ambrosias). […] While the grass pollens have so light a coat that they are frequently crushed in the ordinary process of mounting, the ragweed (ambrosias) pollen grains resist pressure between two glass slides carried to the point of crushing the glass.
- 2002, Lura Spears Zerick, The Golden Olden Days, page 69:
  These burrs stuck to the tails of the cows as they walked by, and were brought to the cowpen, the cowtails greatly enlarged by the huge amount of cockleburs stuck on them.

any of the coarse composite weeds of the genus Xanthium, with a prickly fruit