When Worcester was the principal seat of the English cloth manufactory, teasels were widely grown in the county, particularly in the clay districts of the south-east. With the loss of the Worcester Cloth trade the local cultivation of teasels declined, and in modern production it has been generally supposed that their uses in cloth dressing has been superseded by modern day machinery, but apparently this is not the case, for between the Wars they were still gathered for use in some processes of manufacture, and it was stated that an acre of teasel was worth as much as £70, and the ost of production cannot be great.
Well-developed specimens growing wild on banks and hedgerows were evidence of the suitability of the soil in those areas, and furnishes spiky balls of singularly adhesive powers.
