In reading a short story by Kipling, "Actions and Reactions"
I encountered the word "kelk". Diligent search was unavailing. Sounds like briar or bramble, something that can snag clothing.
"
They walked toward it through an all abandoned land. Here they
found the ghost of a patch of lucerne that had refused to die:
there a harsh fallow surrendered to yard-high thistles; and here
a breadth of rampant kelk feigning to be lawful crop. In the
ungrazed pastures swaths of dead stuff caught their feet, and the
ground beneath glistened with sweat. At the bottom of the valley
a little brook had undermined its footbridge, and frothed in the
wreckage. But there stood great woods on the slopes beyond--old,
tall, and brilliant, like unfaded tapestries against the walls of
a ruined house."