Teazle - DIPSACUS SATIVUS

A lovely wild flower area of a local park - I unexpectedly found it covered in pretty teazles - 


Teazles were employed in the cloth-making industry at least as far back as the Middle Ages, as they are mentioned in John Langland’s “Piers Plowman” of 1377. A rough translation is this: - "Cloth that comes from the weaving is in no way good to wear until it is fulled… and with the teazel scratched.”


“They previously wet the cloth thoroughly in a cistern of water, and comb the wool all one way with teazles, which are fixed for this purpose in a small wooden frame. Some of these are arranged on the floor….”


Children used to use the teazel heads to comb the hair of their dolls and in earlier times it was used to get knots out of hair and beards, giving rise to other old names, Brushes and Combs and Barber’s Brush