the.com/dandelion
the weed that conquered every continent while gardeners declared war and lost
means A common yellow-flowered plant with toothed leaves and a fluffy seed head, widely regarded as a weed but also edible and used in herbal remedies.
from From the French 'dent de lion' — 'tooth of the lion' — for the jagged, tooth-edged leaves. English mangled the French into 'dandelion,' a fossil of medieval Anglo-French speech. Curiously, modern French calls the plant 'pissenlit' ('wet-the-bed'), a nod to its old reputation as a diuretic — so the same flower wears a lion's teeth in one tongue and a bedwetting joke in another.
- name origin
- French dent de lion, lion's tooth, for jagged leaves
- clone army
- reproduces without sex, each seed a perfect copy
- all edible
- roots, leaves, flowers all eaten and brewed
- deep roots
- taproots can plunge fifteen feet underground
- telling time
- flowers open at dawn, close before rain
taraxacum officinale — the common dandelion species found across north america, europe, and asia since at least the 10th century
dandelion wine — fermented beverage made from dandelion flowers, popular in medieval europe and still produced commercially
dandelion greens — cultivated leafy vegetable sold in markets worldwide, especially in italy and france as cicoria selvatica