
But burdock.
Burdock can go to hell. Towering to six feet in height, and topped with vicious tea-berry-gum clusters of super-sticky, clingy, nasty seed-heads (burs), burdocks can actually kill small birds by dread-locking their feathers into a clump.

Of course burdock (family Arctium, sounding all muscular and super-heroic) does have fans.

It's also -- to be fair -- edible: the root is a bit like turnip, crunchy and earthy and sweetish.
Traditional herbal medicine* uses the plant for skin and hair ailments as well as for purifying the blood and soothing sore throats.
(*I go to the source for this: Culpepper's Complete Herbal, published in 1653. Culpepper also recommends burdock as a treatment for rabies, but we'll let that pass.)
Still, when I found a stand of burdock at the would-be farm, there was no question of putting the plants to medical use. It was full-on battle-stations.

They snap as they burn. The myriad tiny seedcases crack open as the bur takes on the heat. Each seed releases a tiny bit of oil that flares with a yellow flame, even when the plant is damp from snow.

I suppose the burdock-cull will become part of the annual calendar (knock wood we are granted the years to have such a thing) that puts us next to the fire, trying to flick the burs off our gloves and listening to the crackle as most (but not all) of the seeds turn to ash.