The lowly dandelion, the bane of every home owner's lawn. Taraxacum officinale in the family Asteraceae made it's way to the americas it is surmised on the ship the Mayflower. It was not an accidental transfer but a purposeful bringing by the pilgrims who brought it as a food plant.
Indeed every part of the plant is edible; flowers, leaves, and roots. However, I would advise people not to pull them up from their lawns to add to salads given the amounts of fertilizers, pestisides, and exposure to air pollution that the dandelion is exposed to. The flower has been used in the making of Dandelion wine, the leaves added to salad, and the root dried and ground up for a coffee substitute.
Indeed humans are not the only ones to benefit from the plant. Many herbivores enjoy munching on them and the flowers are a very important early spring food source for bees. Butterfly larva of some species use the plant as a food source.
The name dandelion comes from the corruption of the french phrase dent-de-lion which translates as lion's tooth. So named for the jagged shaped leaves that resemble their namesake. Other names for the plant are blowball, cankerwort, doon-head-clock, witch's gowan, faceclock, piss-a-bed, wet-a-bed, white endive, and wild endive among others.
In certain areas of the world it has been used as a herbal medicine as it contains a number of pharmacologically active compounds. It has been used to treat inflamation, inflamed lymph nodes, bile and liver problems, and as a strong diuretic (hence the names piss-a-bed and wet-a-bed).
Once the flower has dried back it spreads out into a ball with feathery attachments on each seed.
Carried on the breeze seeds have been known to travel as much as five miles from their point of origin. As a child my grandmother told me that if I picked the seed ball and was able to blow all of them off my wish would come true. I'm sure this was just her way of keeping me occupied and out of her hair.
Live long and prosper
