Home » Healthy Living » Alternative Medicine » Home Remedies

The Beauty and Benefits of Dandelions

Ranked #6,822 in Healthy Living, #121,004 overall

Dandelion, the Wonder Weed of the Wild

Do you remember playing with Dandelion Clocks?

We used to tell the time by counting how many puffs it took to denude a dandelion - is this something everyone did? Dandelion seeds are carried away by the wind and travel like tiny parachutes, often miles away from the parent plant.

We also believed that if we could blow away all the seeds in one breath then maybe our wish would come true. We would have been better off eating the dandelions instead of puffing at the filamentous achenes for the common dandelion has absolutely wonderful health benefits.

Does this bring back memories?

The Dandelion Clock

A dandelion is really many tiny flowers bunched together.After a dandelion blooms, each of its tiny flowers produces a seed. Each seed is attached to a stem with white fluffy threads.

Dandelion Tea

I don't know about you, but the word bile has always sounded off-putting to me. I suppose it's the connection to bilious. So let me just say quickly that bile acts to some extent as a detergent, helping to emulsify fats, is an important part of the absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins D, E, K and A, neutralises any excess stomach acid before it enters the small intestine and kills invading microbes which enter with food.

Dandelion Tea is a traditional tonic. It strengthens the entire body and promotes the flow of bile in the liver and gallbladder. It's good for chronic hepatitis, reduces liver swelling and jaundice, and assists indigestion which is caused by insufficient bile. (I'm not going to mention that word again).

Dandelion tea and me I was introduced to dandelion tea as a teenager by my Great Aunt Bessie. She promised I would get relief from premenstrual bloating and tenderness by drinking dandelion tea. She was right!

These days, after a few glasses of wine, I quaff a cup of dandelion tea before I go to bed. I've never seen any scientific explanation for this but, without the tea, I wake up fuzzy headed, furry tongued and cranky. Life is too short to be cranky.

Making Dandelion Tea

You can buy Dandelion Tea in packets now. If you want to make your own, here's what I still do. The method hasn't changed since I was in my teens, but the possibility of pesticides is higher so only use your home grown dandelions.

Get some dandelion roots. Wash them thoroughly in cold water. Chop, and crush, as best as you can. You can place them in a shallow baking tray and roast gently on low heat for 5 minutes or so if you like, or just use them without roasting.

Put one teaspoon of dandelion root in a cup of boiling water and add a drop of honey. This takes the same amount of time as making a cup of instant coffee.

Talking of coffee, you can buy dandelion coffee too. In the prepared product, the roots are slightly roasted and ground ready to use. Some people say that it's indistinguishable from real coffee, but I beg to differ. It has its own taste, pleasant enough, but certainly nothing like the coffee I'm used to drinking. However, it's better than lower quality coffee, which has all too often been adulterated.

If you're trying to give up coffee, dandelion root makes an excellent substitute in the morning. Energy without caffeine!

Medicinal Benefits of Dandelions

Dandelion is regarded as one of the very best herbs for gall, spleen and liver complaints. It's one of the safest and most active plant diuretics.

My grandmother called a dandelion Pee the Bed which shocked me with its vulgarity as a child but now I know it's the anglicised version of the modern French name, Piss en Lit, which is just as vulgar.

We call this lovely weed by an older French word Dent de Lion, Lion's Teeth, and one look at the deeply toothed leaves will tell you why. But there's a good reason to call the dandelion Pee the Bed.

Dandelions give the kidneys an urge to expel urine, improving the way they cleanse the blood and recycle nutrients. Unlike pharmaceuticals diuretics, this doesn't leach potassium, a vital mineral, from the body. Improved general health and clear skin result from improved kidney function.

Benefits of Dandelion Leaves

Dandelion leaves are a valuable alkaliser to the body, and recommended for anyone with liver complaints. Eaten regularly as a preventative, they help to keep the liver at peak efficiency.

They assist the body to reduce excess acidity, they oxygenate, purify and build blood, and they cleanse and regenerate cells.

The bitter principles stimulate the digestion by the production of stomach acids and enzymes and, in doing so, make it easier to digest fats and oils.

Dandelions for Dinner

Dandelion leaves are at their best when they've just emerged from the ground.

Collect dandelion leaves in early spring, when they're the tastiest, before the flowers appear. Make sure you pick only the very young plants, for once the flower buds are fully formed, the leaves became bitter. Choose dandelions with intensely serrated leaves and white stems.

Cut the florets just above the root, remove any semi-formed flower buds and fluff, wash thoroughly in several rinses of cold water. Don't use hot water and don't boil them.

Dandelion greens are wonderful in salads, and when they are sauteed or steamed.

The leaves are incredibly nutritious. Let's suppose you saw a packet of pills in the supermarket that promised more beta-carotene than carrots, higher iron and calcium content than spinach, vitamins B-1, B-2, B-5, B-6, B-12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc. Would you buy those pills?

Go and pull up some dandelions from your lawn. They're fresh, free and phenomonal.

Use your own dandelions!

You can never be sure of plants gathered from the city parks or at the sides of roads. They may have been sprayed or treated with chemicals.

If you aren't sure, don't use them.

The Forager's Harvest

A world of wild foods outside

If you're a botanist you won't need all these colour photographs of edible plants but, if you're just getting started in foraging, there's just no substitute for clear colour photographs.

Highly recommended for naturalists, gardeners, foragers, frugalists, survivalists, and anyone who longs to explore the wild garden growing around them.

The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants

by: Samuel Thayer

Amazon Price: $14.12 (as of 02/16/2012)

An excellent introduction to foraging for wild food. Extensive descriptions, a useful glossary, repeated referencing and detailed photos. I could recommend this for the photos alone

A wealth of information, not only informative, but inspiring!

Herbal Learning

A primer for beginners to herbalism

More Enchanting Edible Flowers

For Health and B eauty

The Beauty and the Benefits of Sunflowers: What could be as lovely as the sunflower with its bright golden beauty, captured from the sunshine of a hundred sunny days?
The Beauty and the Benefits of Violets: From classical times, violets have been cultivated for wine, perfume, medicinal purposes and used as decorative garlands and wreaths. Apart from anything else, violets are just beautiful!
The Beauty and the Benefits of Calendula: The bright cheerful calendula, or marigold, is native to Mediterranean countries but now treasured as an ornamental plant throughout the world.

More Wonderful Wild Foods

How about you?

Loading poll. Please Wait...

Share this poll
- Stumbleupon
- Facebook
- MySpace
- Twitter
- Digg
- Delicious
- Email

This module only appears with actual data when viewed on a live lens. The favorite and lensroll options will appear on a live lens if the viewer is a member of Squidoo and logged in.

Add this to your lens »

Leave a Doodle for the Dandelions

Every comment is appreciated. You don't have to be a Squidoo member to leave yours

submit

Reply

OhMe Jun 16, 2010 @ 10:46 am | delete

I love Dandelions and appreciated reading about it's medicinal purposes and ways to enjoy eating the dandelion. I just enjoy looking at them and of course blowing them. Lensrolled to my Dandelion lens.

Reply

mbrownauthor May 23, 2010 @ 5:46 am | delete

Very intereting lens, Susanna! I've never tried these, but perhaps will some day!

Reply

_Joan_ May 23, 2010 @ 12:59 am | delete

Hi! I'm lensrolling this to my Dandelion lens. Yum yum!

Reply

Pan_narrans Feb 28, 2010 @ 5:24 pm | delete

Hi Susanna,
I'm writing some lenses about Herbalism. My background is as a Biologist and historical re-enactor, so I've got interests in herbs as medicine, food, magic and anything else that people have been using them for over the last few hundred years.
This range of topics is obviously too much to get into one lens, so I've made a set of related ones.
The central one is at Herbalist Lens. Or http://www.squidoo.com/the-herbalist if you don't allow HTML on your guestbook.

Since you have a couple of lens about herbs as medicine / food, I've included a link to it. I hope you will take the time to have a look at my work and perhaps join the group (with a small g) or give a backlink for mutual benefit.
Comments are welcome, either at the Herbalist Forum, someone has to be first, or direct to me.
Best wishes,
Ian. aka Pan_narrans

Reply

Cari_Kay Jun 10, 2009 @ 5:20 pm | delete

As I recall, I was drinking dandelion tea while pregnant to help with the awful swelling I was enduring. Very nice lens!
Load More