Herbariuma Backpackers project
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Cat's ear

Hypochaeris radicata

Family · Asteraceae · Harmless

Edible
Cat's ear (Hypochaeris radicata)Cat's ear (Hypochaeris radicata)
Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0

The yellow flower everyone calls a dandelion and which is not. It fills lawns and meadows across the country and is told apart by one simple thing: the stalk branches, and a dandelion's never does.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands

Also known as

common catsear, false dandelion

In flower

How to tell it

A rosette of ground-hugging leaves, roughly hairy on both sides, with rounded lobes. The stalk is solid, branches into two or three flowers and carries small scales instead of leaves. A dandelion's stalk is hollow, bare and single-flowered.

What it is confused with

Dandelion

Taraxacum officinale

Harmless confusion

The stalk settles it: hollow, bare and single-flowered on dandelion; solid, scaly and branched here. And cat's ear's leaf is hairy, dandelion's is smooth. Both edible.

Open sheet →

What it is for

Young leaves in salad and cooked, less bitter than a dandelion's, and used in Crete as a gathered vegetable. The root was also roasted as a coffee substitute.

Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.

Sources