Dandelion Seeds (Taraxacum officinale)

Taraxacum officinale

Dandelion, lion’s tooth, lion’s tooth plant, golden florin, dog lettuce, monk’s crown: the much-maligned lawn weed is one of the garden’s most useful plants. Its taproot descends as far as a metre and brings up minerals inaccessible to other plants — and its flowering, one of the very first of the year, literally saves pollinators as they emerge from winter.

Characteristics:

• Indestructible perennial: once established, it returns every year without any care.
• Triple use: leaves in salads, flowers in syrup, and roasted roots as a coffee substitute.
• Very early flowering: from March onwards, when almost nothing else is in bloom.
• Drought-resistant: its long taproot allows it to draw water from deep underground.

Precautions:

• It self-seeds very effectively, with its feathery achenes travelling far on the wind. Cut off the faded flowers before they form their “clocks” if you do not want it to spread.
• Its taproot makes it difficult to move once established: choose its location carefully.

Sowing advice:

• Exposure: full sun to partial shade.
• Soil: light, fresh, well-drained, even poor soil. It adapts to almost anything, but deep, loose soil produces finer roots if those are what you are aiming for.
• Method: sow in spring or autumn, directly in place or in pots, barely covering the seeds. Stratification is not required, but a cold period of 2 to 3 weeks improves the germination rate. Emergence in 10 to 20 days depending on the temperature. See how to sow your seeds.

Care advice:

• Water moderately; it withstands drought well once established.
• The market gardener’s trick: to obtain tender, much less bitter leaves, cover the clump with an opaque upturned pot for two to three weeks before harvesting. The leaves blanch and become considerably milder.

Harvesting advice:

• Pick the young leaves in spring, before flowering: this is when they are at their most tender. Afterwards, the bitterness increases noticeably.
• Harvest the flowers in full sun, when fully open. Dig up the roots in autumn of the second year.

Beneficial associations:

• It combines well with chamomile, nettle and yarrow to create a corner of useful, nectar-rich wild plants. See our edible perennial plants.

Benefits for biodiversity:

• Its early flowering makes it a vital resource for the first pollinators of spring — bees, bumblebees emerging from hibernation, and early butterflies — at a time when almost nothing else is available. This is the number one reason not to mow in March.
• Its deep root loosens the soil and brings minerals up from the lower layers for the benefit of neighbouring plants.
• Its seeds feed goldfinches and other seed-eating birds.

Uses:

• Young leaves in salads, traditionally with bacon and a poached egg. Flowers in syrup or jelly — the famous cramaillotte, or “dandelion honey”. Roasted roots as a coffee substitute. Flower buds pickled like capers.
• Traditional medicinal plant, listed in the French Pharmacopoeia. See our medicinal plants to sow.

Symbolism:
A symbol of freedom, perseverance and hope, the dandelion evokes the wishes we blow into the wind — a universal childhood gesture that is also, quite literally, its dispersal strategy.

Harvesting your own seeds:
Nothing could be easier: pick the “clocks”, those fluffy spheres, just before they blow away, and detach the achenes from their tufts. See how to store your seeds.

Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.

The much-maligned lawn weed, indispensable to March’s bees.