A row of urchins

My pet teasel plant collapsed during the summer so the flower stalks grew up at right angles to the recumbent stem, seeking the sunlight. Now the dry seed heads stand in a pleasing array - or should that be a teasing array? Because as we know they were formerly used to tease or raise the nap on woollen cloth. a process that made it softer to the touch. Teasels were cultivated for the purpose right into the 20th century, chiefly in Somerset where the teasel fields turned the landscape purple and attracted bees from miles around. Teasel honey was said to be delicious.

Nowadays teasels are mostly used for the purpose of making twee ornamental hedgehogs mainly found on craft stalls around this time of year, the shape and the spininess of the seed heads both lending verisimilitude for the purpose. However my imagination was teased when I read that the ancient Romans used hedgehog skins as an alternative to Dipsacus fullorum in the production of textiles.
It's not hard to deduce why this method fell out of favour. While it seems simple enough to plant and harvest a field of teasel plants, imagine farming hedgehogs. For one thing they'd be asleep half the year.  I suppose you could do a sideline in urchinburgers (urchin being the old word for the spiny beasts) - but still.