Confessions of a (reformed) dandelion-hater
e Chinese revere the dandelion, calling it huang-huatiiting or “Golden-Flowered Earth Nail.”
Brits, Europeans and Russians consider it a native vegetable delicacy. In the 1950s the British, alarmed that modern agriculture was wiping it out, mounted a “Save the Dandelions” campaign.
English-speaking Canadian settlers called it “the French flower” – which suggests Francophones introduced it here as a potherb. For both, it was a standard spring tonic.
Nutritionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ranks it ahead of spinach, and even broccoli. Medicinally, Chinese healers rank it among their six most useful medicinal plants.
All well and good, we say, just keep ’em o my lawn!
And orchardists rightly grumble that this plant’s ultra-early blooming disrupts fruit tree pollination by wooing bees away. What’s our excuse? On re ection, I realized that my battles with this introduced European wildflower had been mainly in the garden; I’d conceded our lawn to them years ago.
Now I know what I was up against. Taraxacum officinale (Latin for “the o cial herb”) is one of Nature’s star survivors. Its defences are formidable. While most plants deter enemies by prickles, thorns and toxins, dandelions do it by breeding and growing faster than they can be et. Cows love ‘em, though it turns their milk bitter, yet our dairy pastures never lack for it.
How come? First, this plant is very frost-hardy, staying green all winter under the snow. is gives it a head start on Kentucky Blue and other grasses of southern origin. Second, they root deep, up to a metre in good soil.
is means they can laugh at heat and drought while nearby crop plants die of thirst. ird, they can re-sprout from any bit of root we overlook.
It gets worse. ey can clone themselves. Using a self-fertilizing process called apomixis, they can produce viable seed without cross-pollination. So, in a pinch, a single ripe seedhead can save the race. Each grey globe contains at least 200 seeds (I’ve counted). Each has a parachute which can hold them aloft – get this, as long as relative humidity is less than 70 per cent. When the humidity rises, usually just before rain, down they come. It can be hundreds of kilometres away or on a lawn down the street.
That, I had to admit, was pretty cool.
Finally, dandelions can “learn.” Take for instance the way they cope with repeated close mowing. is practice favours those which hunker low and bloom early and often. So, season by season, we’re breeding a shorter stalk. Evolution at work. That dandelions are “smart” – isn’t that what survival implies? – shouldn’t surprise us.
Take one simple example. On sunny afternoons the pasture next door is spangled with them. I go for lunch and come back an hour later to nd they’ve all but vanished! How? Well, the sky clouded over and it began to rain. Within the hour nearly every flower folded its petals and sepals like a shopkeeper closing up. Why stay open with no insect customers abroad? No sense wetting the merchandise, its precious pollen and nectar. Best to wait for another sunny day. Smart.
By now, nothing surprised me about this plant.
at’s why from then on my standard opening advice to novice dandelion-killers, and myself, was: Give in. Yon pesky weed is here to stay.
My closing advice is similar: If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.
e early greens are great and their dried and peeled roots yield a hot drink tasting somewhere between coffee and chocolate. My spouse makes a winter’s supply each summer.
Back to my garden, I mended my ways. Heeding Grandma Saunders’ advice, every year since I’ve taken my spring tonic. Harvested early before the leaves turn bitter, steamed for 10 minutes and buttered, it tastes great. Or add it to a tossed salad. My spouse read somewhere that the unopened ower buds are also good – and it’s true.
For me the clincher came one recent spring at a local Seedy Saturday workshop. An eloquent presenter convinced me that garden dandelions, left undisturbed, act as a fertilizer pump. Rooting up to a metre deep, they lift out-ofreach nutrients to the surface.
Since then, unless a dandelion clump is hogging a veggie bed or blocking a path, I behead it with a spade and bury the top. ( e root usually sprouts copious pale, tender greens, over and over – enough to blanch and preserve.
Not bad for a mere “weed.”