Burdock
Arctium lappa
Gobo. A biennial whose first-year taproot is a crunchy, earthy vegetable in Japanese cooking. Burs on second-year plants are why you hate it in the dog’s fur. Not a ‘blood cleaner’ tea mandate.
GROW → HARVEST → EAT → DRY → POWDER → CAPSULE → GUMMY — forms are not equivalent. Food first.
Identity
Also called: gobo
What it is
Gobo. A biennial whose first-year taproot is a crunchy, earthy vegetable in Japanese cooking. Burs on second-year plants are why you hate it in the dog’s fur. Not a ‘blood cleaner’ tea mandate.
Edible portions
- first-year roots
- young peeled stalks in some traditions
Absence of a portion from this list means it is not treated as food here — not that every other part is toxic.
Growing
- Climate. 3–9 biennial weed/crop
- Light. Full sun
- Soil. Deep, loose for straight roots
- Planting. Direct-sow; long roots. Harvest year one.
- Harvest. Fall of year one before it flowers.
Preparation and culinary uses
- Kinpira gobo (julienne and sauté)
- Soups
Nutrition and compounds
- Minerals (qualitative). fiber, potassium — look up current USDA FoodData Central entries for numbers.
AAA interpretation Food first. These associations explain why a plant shows up in a nutrient conversation — they are not a supplement shopping list.
Traditional uses
Traditional use Folk ‘alterative’ root — traditional claim, not a lab result
AAA interpretation Traditional use is not automatically evidence, and evidence is not automatically a shopping recommendation.
Next steps
Sources
- USDA PLANTS Database — taxonomy and range (verify current entries)
- USDA FoodData Central — nutrient profiles for foods (verify current entries; this page does not invent milligrams)
- State cooperative extension growing guides — verify for your region
Honest incompleteness is preferred to fabricated completeness. If a section is missing, no record for it is attached here — not a claim that the plant lacks that characteristic, and not that it was omitted as a secret.
Internal quality class A. Strong page: distinctive plant facts plus practical growing or kitchen use.