Dandelion
Taraxacum officinale
Family · Asteraceae · Harmless
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The yellow flower that turns into a seed ball, blown by every child. Each stalk carries a single flower, is hollow, and bleeds white milk when broken.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Uplands
Also known ascommon dandelion, blowball
How to tell it
A rosette of ground-hugging leaves cut into backward-pointing teeth, which is where the name comes from. One flower per stalk, always, and the stalk is hollow and leafless.
What it is confused with
Sow thistle
Sonchus oleraceus
Sowthistle has a leafy stem and several flowers per plant; dandelion has a bare stalk and a single flower. Both edible, so the mistake costs nothing.
What it is for
Young leaves in salad, roasted root as a coffee substitute, and flowers in jelly. In European folk medicine it was above all a bitter and diuretic plant.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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