Foraging for Wild Dandelion Greens

Reader Contribution by Jo Ann Gardner
Published on May 14, 2015
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Even though we now live near a food market after years in the remote countryside, we still strive to grow as much of our food as we can and we enjoy the thrill of harvesting it from the wild. We look forward to dandelion season, not only because we crave something fresh after a winter of stored vegetables, but because we associate collecting their edible leaves with spring renewal. To us, their tangy flavor in raw, wilted, and cooked dishes is synonymous with the fresh things that come from the earth when the snow melts, the soil warms, and we are reconnected to the living land.

Taraxacum officinale has a long history as a valued medicinal and a nutritious food. It is also a ubiquitous weed, turning up in lawns, pastures, roadsides, and in the proverbial waste places. Perennial plants grow from a tenacious, hard taproot, white inside and brown without, from which sprout jagged, dark green basal foliage, tangy and refreshingly bitter at first, aging to decidedly bitter. Buy late spring bright, yellow flowers bloom atop hollow stems, followed by fluffy fruits dispersed by the wind over vast areas, thus assuring the establishment of ever more plants.

Bitter properties throughout the plant, but most powerfully present in its roots, are responsible for claims of its vast curative powers, first recorded by an Arabian doctor in the tenth century. Preparations from the plants roots and leafy tops were used to treat kidney and liver disorders, and to increase mobility from stiffness in cases of degenerative joint diseases. A potent diuretic, it earned the country name “piddle bed.”

Nutritionally, dandelions are a powerhouse plant. Low in water content but rich in protein, sugar, vitamins A and C, calcium, and minerals, their leafy greens are at the top of the list of valued edible weeds. They rank higher than lettuce (cos or romine) in protein, carbohydrates, calcium, and iron, and much higher in nearly all vitamins and minerals.*

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