The Plant With the Most Unprintable Korean Name — Growing Out of a Concrete Wall

 The Plant With the Most Unprintable Korean Name — Growing Out of a Concrete Wall

Korean plant names, as I've noted before on this blog, are sometimes poetic and sometimes brutally literal.

큰방가지똥 is the brutal end of that spectrum.

방가지 is an old Korean word related to a type of container or vessel. 똥 means excrement. 큰 means large. Put it all together and you get something like "large vessel-shaped excrement plant" — which refers, botanists believe, to the shape of the seed head when it's gone to seed and looks somewhat like a small round mass. The naming logic exists. It is not flattering.

And then there's the English name: Prickly Sowthistle. Named because pigs eat it. At least both names agree that this plant is not intended to impress anyone.

What's actually impressive is where I found it. Growing directly out of the gap between two concrete blocks on a wall, in what appears to be essentially no soil at all, in full sun, tall enough to produce multiple seed heads. The plant in the second photo has rooted in a crack between blocks and is sending up a branching stem that reaches the top of the wall. It looks like something that decided concrete was a perfectly acceptable growing medium and then proved the point.

 The Plant: 큰방가지똥 (Sonchus asper)

**Korean name:** 큰방가지똥  

**English common name:** Prickly Sowthistle, Spiny Sowthistle  

**Scientific name:** *Sonchus asper* (L.) Hill  

**Family:** Asteraceae (국화과)  

**Blooms:** April – October  

**Height:** 30–150cm  

**Native range:** Europe, western Asia; now cosmopolitan  

**Toxicity:** None. Edible throughout, though bitter.

*Sonchus asper* is an annual or biennial herb that has spread from its original European and western Asian range to virtually every continent on earth. It follows human disturbance — cultivated fields, roadsides, construction sites, and apparently concrete block walls — and can grow from spring to late autumn in mild climates, sometimes producing two complete generations in a single year.

The stem is hollow and contains white milky sap when cut, placing it firmly in the bitter-latex Asteraceae tradition alongside dandelions, 씀바귀, and 고들빼기. The leaves are deeply lobed with very sharp, spiny teeth at the margins — the "prickly" in the English name, and the reason handling this plant without care leaves small puncture marks on your hands. The leaf bases clasp the stem with rounded, ear-like lobes.

The flower heads are yellow, like a small dandelion, and open only in bright sun. The seed heads that follow are the classic Asteraceae structure: each seed has its own feathery pappus that carries it on the wind. In the photos here, one seed head has already opened into that white fluffy ball while neighboring buds are still green.

 What Pigs Know That We Forgot

The "sow" in Sowthistle refers to female pigs, and the name comes from the observation that pigs readily eat this plant. This is a pattern worth paying attention to: domesticated animals often have reliable instincts about edibility that humans, having outsourced their foraging knowledge to agriculture, have largely forgotten.

*Sonchus asper* and its close relative *Sonchus oleraceus* (방가지똥, the smooth version without the spiny leaf margins) have been eaten by humans across Europe, Asia, and Africa for centuries. The Romans ate them. Medieval European herbalists recommended them. In East African countries, sowthistle leaves are still a common cooked vegetable. The young leaves are bitter — the milky sap that contains sesquiterpene lactones is responsible — but blanching reduces the bitterness significantly.

In Korea, 방가지똥 species were gathered as a spring 나물 in lean times. The plant was never a preferred green — the spines on 큰방가지똥's leaf margins are a genuine inconvenience — but it was available, nutritious enough, and harmless. The nutritional profile is respectable: vitamin C, beta-carotene, calcium, and various phenolic antioxidants have been documented in laboratory analysis.

Traditional Korean and East Asian folk medicine used sowthistle species to clear heat and toxins, reduce inflammation, and treat conditions associated with excess internal heat — fever, skin inflammation, and digestive complaints. The milky sap was applied topically to warts and skin conditions in some regional traditions.

 The Seed Engineering

Looking at the first photo, what's happening with that white seed head is worth understanding.

Each individual seed is attached to a cluster of fine white hairs — the pappus — which acts as a parachute. When conditions are right, the seed separates from the head and drifts. The hairs collapse in humid or rainy conditions, keeping the seed anchored, and expand in dry windy conditions, optimizing for dispersal.

This is not a passive system. It responds to weather. The plant times its seed release.

A single *Sonchus asper* plant can produce thousands of seeds in a season. Each seed can germinate within days of landing on disturbed soil. The plant that found the crack in this concrete wall almost certainly arrived as a wind-dispersed seed that happened to land in exactly the right gap — perhaps a millimeter of accumulated debris, enough moisture from the concrete's capillary action, enough sun.

It germinated. It grew. It is now producing seeds that will drift to other walls.

 Finding It

In Korea from spring through autumn, 큰방가지똥 appears wherever the ground is disturbed — and, as these photos demonstrate, wherever concrete provides a viable crack. The key identification features are the hollow stem with milky sap, the spiny-margined leaves that clasp the stem with rounded ear-like bases, the yellow dandelion-like flowers in sun, and the white fluffy seed heads.

The sister species 방가지똥 (*Sonchus oleraceus*) looks very similar but has softer leaves without the pronounced spiny margins — the "smooth" versus "prickly" distinction in the English names. Both are edible, both produce the same milky sap, both grow in the same kinds of disturbed habitats.

For eating: harvest the youngest leaves before the plant gets tall, when the spines are still relatively soft. Blanch in boiling water, drain, and season. The bitterness is real but manageable with preparation. Think of it as the plant's contribution to the Korean tradition of finding something edible everywhere you look.

 ⚠️ Disclaimer

This blog documents Korean plants and their traditional uses for educational and cultural purposes only. Nothing here is medical advice. If you're considering foraging or using any wild plant, consult a qualified botanist or herbalist and verify identification through multiple reliable sources before doing anything with what you find.

*Photographed in Korea, May 2026. All field photography by The Korean Herbalist.*

**Tags:** 큰방가지똥, Sonchus asper, prickly sowthistle, Korean edible weeds, Korean traditional medicine, Korean foraging, Asteraceae Korea, urban wildflowers Korea, 봄나물, Korean spring plants