I’d been cycling for twenty minutes when I felt something under the shoulder of my high-vis bike vest. Had a twig or leaf lodged there? Feeling a distinct nip, I realised I was carrying a passenger. A wasp? Stopping, I carefully took off the reflective cyclewear. As I did so, something pricked my finger. Yet my fellow traveller had no teeth, nor stinging tail. It was a burr – the seed head of a burdock plant, that unruly giant of waysides and wild, summer meadows.