Cocklebur Fruit

Overview. Cocklebur is a coarse, weedy annual of the daisy family that thrives in disturbed, nutrient-rich ground such as barnyards, fallow fields and roadsides across temperate regions worldwide. The bristly, hook-covered burrs that give the plant its common names are its most recognizable feature, and both the leaves and the mature fruit have a place in traditional medicine, the leaves in the nineteenth century Physiomedical and Eclectic literature of North America and the fruit, prepared by stir-frying to reduce its toxicity, as a long-established herb in Chinese medicine for sinus and nasal complaints. The Latin epithet strumarium reflects an old use of the plant for scrofulous, or struma-like, glandular swellings.

Clinical Notes. Used primarily in TCM as Cang Er Zi Fruit processed by stir-baking to reduce toxicity Often combined in formulas like Cang Er Zi San for nasal conditions Hepatotoxic potential mitigated by processing Equivalent to Xanthium strumarium in many pharmacopoeial contexts

Clinical Notes. The Eclectic and Physiomedical writers valued the leaf infusion as a gentle, diffusive nervine, something to settle a restless, wiry patient whose skin is dry and whose complaints are vague and shifting rather than sharply localized.

Action and Therapy. This agent acts much like clotbur, and has been used with advantage in painful urination, with scalding, and marked sensitiveness of the urethra and bladder, with frequent micturition. It is also said to be of service in hemorrhages, as passive hemorrhage from the bowels and the epistaxis of purpura hemorrhagica. For the last-named disorders it is probably of little value, though it should be tried where other means are unavailing.