FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
TARAXACUM OFFICINALE Compositae, DANDELION
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is a plant of the temperate regions, north and south. The dandelion is highly spoken of as a spring green by various authors and has been used as a food plant in many regions but it has only recently come under cultivation. When a swarm of locusts destroyed vegetation in the Island of Minorca, the inhabitants subsisted on this plant, and, in Gottingen, the dried root has been used as a substitute for coffee. In 1749, Kalm speaks of the French in New York preparing and eating the roots as a common salad but not usually employing the leaves. The plant is now eaten raw or cooked by the Digger Indians of Colorado and the Apaches of Arizona. In 1828, Fessenden says the wild plant is used by our people but is never cultivated. In 1853, McIntosh, an English author, had never heard of dandelions being cultivated. They are now extensively cultivated in France, and, in 1879, five varieties appeared in the French catalogs.
Dandelions are blanched for use as a winter salad. They are now very largely grown by our market gardeners, and Thorburn, in 1881, offers seed of two sorts. In 1871, four varieties were exhibited at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society under the names of the French Large-leaved, French Thick-leaved, Red-seeded and the American Improved. Fearing Burr, who exhibited htem, makes no mention of dandelions in his Garden Vegetables, 1866. The common name is a corruption of dent de lion, a word which is found in the Welsh Dant y Lew of the thirteenth century. Its vernacular names in various languages have usually reference to the peculiar indentation of the leaves, or to some other resemblance or character of the plant. By commentators, the dandelion has been identified with the aphake of Theophrastus, a in composition signifying absence of and phake, lentils, or the name, perhaps, signifiying that the plant can be used as a green before lentils appear in the spring. The dandelion may be the ambubeia of Pliny and the name may suggest the scattering of the seed, ambulo meaning the going backward and forward, but some commentators assign this name to the wild endive or chicory; the hedypnois of Pliny is but doubtfully identified with our dandelion and appears to be derived from two Greek words signifying sweet breath and may refer to the sweet smell of the flowers.
Bauhin, in his Pinax, 1623, enumerates two varieties of dandelion: one, the Dens Leonis latiore filio, carried back in his synonymy to Brunselsius, 1539; the other, Dens Leonis angustiore folio, carried back in like manner to Caesalpinus, 1583. The first kind, he says, has a large and a medium variety, the leaves sometimes pointed, sometimes obtuse. In the Flore Naturelle et Economique, Paris, 1803, the same varieties, apparently, are mentioned, one with narrow leaves and the other with large and rounded leaves. In Martyn's Miller's Dictionary, 1807, the leaves of the dandelion are said to vary from pinnatifid or deeply runcinate in a very dry situation to nearly entire in a very moist one, generally smooth but sometimes a little rough; and Leontodon palustris is described as scarcely more than a variety, varying much in its leaves, which have few notches or are almost entire, the plant smoother, neter, more levigated and more glaucous than the common dandelion.
In Geneva, New York, on the grounds of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, a large number of variations are to be commonly noted, both in the habit and appearance of the plant and irrespective of difference of soil or exposure, as varieties may readily be separated whose roots are intertwined. Some plants grow with quite erect leaves, others with their leaves closely appressed to the soil; some have broad, others narrow leaves; some have runcinate leaves, others leaves much cut and almost fringed and yet others the leaves nearly entire; some have almost sessile leaves; some have smooth leaves, others roughened leaves; some have thin, others thick leaves; some grow to a larger size, others are always dwarfer; some have an open manner of growth, others a close manner.
The use of the wild plant as a vegetable seems to have been common from remote times, but its culture is modern. In 1836, a Mr. Corey, Brookline, Massachusetts, grew dandelions for the Boston market from seed obtained from the largest of the wild plants. In 1863, dandelions are described among garden esculents by Burr, but the context does not indicate any especial varieties. In 1874, perhaps earlier, the seed apepars for sale in seed catalogs, and the various seed catalogs of 1885 offer six names, one of which is the "common". In England, dandelion culture is not mentioned in Mawe's Gardener, 1778, nor in Martyn's Miller's Dictionary, 1807; the first notice is in the Gardeners' Chronicle, where an instance of cultivation is noted, the herbage forming "a beautiful and delicate blanched salad." In 1880, its culture had not become common, as this year its cultivation in France, and not in England, is noted. In France, Noisette gives cultural directions and says the wild plant furnishes a spring potherb. The dandelion is not, however, mentioned in L'Horticulteur Francaise, nor in Nouveau Dictionnaire du Jardinage, 1826. Vilmorin mentions its culture in France as dating from 1868, and the firm of Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie., 1885, offers flour sorts of seed, one, the Improved Moss, as new. In Vilmorin's Les Plantes Potageres, 1883, two forms are figured: Pissenlit ameloire & coeur plein and Pissenlit ameliore tres hatif. The first of these is named in Album de Cliches, Pissenlit ameliore frise, and a fourth name or third form is figured, the Pissenlit mousse.
the type of the Pissenlit mousse can be readily found among the wild plants on the grounds of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, very closely resembling Vilmorin's figure in every respect when growing on rich soil, except that the leaf divisions are scarcely as much crowded.
the type of the Pissenlit ameliore a coeur plein is perhaps to be recognized in Anton Pinaeus' figure, 1561, and is certainly to be found growing wild at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station.
the Pissenlit ameliore tres hatif is figured in 1616; the resemblance between the two figures, the one by Dodonaeus and the othr by Vilmorin, is very close. It is also to be found growing wild on the New York station grounds.
