![](https://provincetownindependent.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Beuerlein-Almanac-cockleburs-photo.jpeg)
There’s a lone specimen of rough cocklebur on the edge of the low marsh at the Audubon Sanctuary in Wellfleet that’s just waiting to be bumped into. The burrs of Xanthium strumarium have prickles with tiny hooks that latch onto visitors — whether they’re covered in fur or wearing Levi’s. They’re the mechanism the species uses to distribute its seed.
While highly poisonous to other animals, cockleburs were a favorite snack of the Carolina parakeet, a temperate-zone parrot that could once be found as far north as southern New York, even in winter. It wasn’t the poison that led to their extinction, though; a variety of human-caused factors including hunting and loss of habitat were to blame.