If dandelions were difficult to grow, would we think they were beautiful?

It’s pure cultural idiocy. And frankly, I get pissed off at it.

P.S. You threw away not only something that brings vital nutrients into the soil via a taproot, but also an edible green with much more nutrient density than anything you’ll find at the store.

I love Dandelions and so do my geese! I often stop and ‘harvest’ them when I find them growing wild. The geezers go nuts for the greens. I wish I had more growing in my yard. lol

They’re one of my favourites.

When my mother and her roommates moved us into a 4 bedroom house with a spacious backyard, the yard hadn’t been mowed in months, and there were dandelions covering the yard about 3 feet high. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen and I loved running through it.

I have always wondered the same thing! What is the distinction between weeds and desirable plants? I can understand if a plant is a pest that takes over, but even things we plant on purpose will do that without proper care. Mint, for example, became a force to be reckoned with in my mom’s flower beds. Many weeds seem harmless enough.

I think they are beautiful,but I don’t want them all over my lawn.
My grandfather used to eat dandelion greens and I have recently seen them at the grocery store.

@lucillelucillelucille

Yes, my spoiled geese, I often buy them bunches of organic dandelion greens at one of my local markets.

The store bought ones are huge and leafy, not like the small lawn types, I don’t know what varieties dandelions come in.

I love dandelions. I’ve always assumed that many people were told they were weeds, and thus had a knee-jerk reaction and ripped them out. Course, it seems like many spend more time/money/effort trying to get rid of them than they’re really worth – they don’t steal that much water! I love blowing them at the end of the year…

@Coloma -I’m not sure.
The greens I saw were pretty big,much larger than the lawn variety.
My neighbor’s grandmother told me she picks them right off the lawn and has them in a salad.
She needs to prove this to me. XD

I already think they are beautiful. My husband is big into the lawncare business, and he sprays our yard every year. I think a yard full of dandelions and other “weeds” looks gorgeous over plain grass any day of the week.

I think that we would definitely appreciate them more. I like them; they sorta look like marigolds, but tey are a little messy. Unfortunately, they grow in the wrong places :p. Too much of something is not good…I just wonder if tulips or lilies were weeds…

@lucillelucillelucille I just ate some at work. :)

I find it funny that some of you are saying things like “too much of something is not good”, when most of the time dandelions grow in a place to correct just that problem: too much grass! Same with plantain.

Flowering ornamentals tend to have larger, showier blooms. So dandelions look scruffy and dull next to roses or tulips. Plants such as dandelions tend to be more pleasing in great drifts across a meadow. They are most lovely in their wild context.

The last time I was in Edinburgh I saw a Japanese tourist with an expensive looking camera bending down taking a picture of a dandelion. I thought it was amusing.

Puppies, kittens and children are pretty easy to grow, and I think they’re often beautiful, too. More often than not, in fact.

Great question, I don’t have dandelions in my yard because I keep it neatly mowed. What I wonder is why I water, fertilize the grass and then cut it. It is a crazy world, and I fit right in, heheheh.

My mom would pick dandelion greens, sweated them in a pan with bacon and bacon grease and served them with boiled potatoes. I haven’t had them for years, course I have been in the dog business for years and even when I had dandelions, I knew how they were fettilized and it made them a little less desirable!

@incendiary_dan -Does it taste anything like mesculin lettuce?

@lucillelucillelucille A bit, just more bitter. If you don’t like really bitter greens so much, you can cover them for a day or so before harvesting them. The young ones will also be less bitter, which is true of many wild plants.

And I’ve found plenty in the wild that are bigger than those store bought ones. You guys must just have some weak soil in your lawns. :P

I love dandelions. In my yard, they grow where they want, and get treated the same as the grass that grows along side of them.

Thinking…as I am making spinach raviole, maybe dandelion raviole. Oh my..I LIKE IT! lol

@Coloma Stinging nettles might be better for that. I find they have more of a spinach-y taste than dandelion. But I’m sure dandelion would be good in ravioli, too!

@incendiary_dan

Stinging nettles? Wow! :-)

The sting, for anyone who was wondering, comes out when it’s cooked. What stings people is little needle-like hairs that contain formic acid, which is neutralized by cooking. Eating them fresh and raw is better in some ways, but you need the right technique. ;)

Dude! I’ll build you a cabin on my property if you’ll cook and keep the Coyotes in check. lol

Tempting offer. Can I play with the coyotes?

@incendiary_dan I see my next salad on my lawn :)

P.S. If anyone spies the cute white flowers of the garlic mustard plant, rip it up full stalk. Not only is it a delicious plant to stir-fry with massive nutrient density, but it’s terribly invasive to the U.S. Most of you have probably seen it around.

Dandelions are vital to help sustain the honey bee, which has fallen on hard times.

Read all about it

. Bees collect nectar and pollen from plants for food. They make honey from the nectar. Pollen is their sole protein source… and they use it to make food for their young. Most of the important bee plants in the northeast are wildflowers. Of these, probably the single most valuable early spring wildflower is the dandelion. If a hive survives the winter, beekeepers know the bees will be safe from starvation if they can stay alive until dandelions bloom.

Dandelion pollen is moderately nutritious and the nectar is abundant. It doesn’t normally produce what we call a ‘surplus’, i.e. enough nectar to produce honey above and beyond what the bees will use for themselves, so you won’t generally see dandelion honey for sale, but it gives the bees a huge boost and adds to the health and wellbeing of the hive.

So a very simple, easy way to help honey bees is to refrain from killing the dandelions in your lawn. They’re actually quite pretty. And next time you see a bare patch, think about planting Dutch clover instead of grass. The bees thrive on various weeds in lawns, including clover and plantain (from which they collect pollen). Do you really have to have that perfect, manicured, chemical-laden lawn?”

I am proud to say I use no chemicals and have some beautiful purple clover growing on my lawn right now. Bees or geese, whoever gets it first! lol

I too have clover, ajuga, wild thyme, three different kinds of violets, sorrel, dandelions, ground mint, clover and vetch in my lawn.

@incendiary_dan: I also yank the garlic mustard out of the wood margins. It is a terror, though.

@gailcalled Yep, might as well eat up! I gathered I think almost ten pounds the other day, and I’m not sure I can eat it all. Shame it’s not that good to compost, either.

@incendiary_dan: Plus the issues of the acres of the stuff that belong to my neighbors. One stray seed from them to me, and back it comes. I do have walking onions that make me laugh, however.

@gailcalled

I have Sorrel and Vetch too, and purple thistles and wild millet and miners lettuce and all the rest too..infact, I made my gardener leave some huge millet sprays and thistles around the goose corral last week. He knows not to chop down my prize winning ‘weeds.’ haha

@Coloma: The goldfinch here love the thistles. I am not familiar with miners’ lettuce. What’s that?

@Incendiary dan; Could I throw some diced garlic mustard into a pot of soup at the end of the cooking process, similiar to adding chopped spinach or kale as a pot green?

@gailcalled

Miners Lettuce is a native plant in my area that has a lily pad shaped leaf with a little white bloom in the center. It is an edible green that the miner 49’ers ate a lot of, and, the local native indian tribes as well, the Maidu and Miwok. :-)

@Everyone

Did anyone mention cancer by the way? etc….

@lloydbird Thanks for those links. It keeps turning out that a lot of the easily available wild foods I eat have anti-cancer properties. Autumn-olive, whose fruits have 16 or so times the lycopene concentration of tomatoes, might kill several types of cancers when eaten in large amounts. No wonder cancer is so rare for foraging peoples.

Lets not forget that many parts of a pine cone are edible too. lol

@Coloma Just the nut, actually. It’s the rest of the tree that gives edibles: the inner bark and the needles particularly.

@incendiary_dan

That was a joke…you might be too young to remember, but, there was a guy named Ewel (sp?)Gibbons, years ago, that was a nature nut, survivalist and he would open a commercial for, I think it was Grape Nuts cereal with that line as he stood next to a pine tree. I guess to make a connection with how ‘natural’ Grape Nuts were supposed to be. lol

@Coloma

Euell Gibbons. I met him in 1970 in Maine when I was there for Outward Bound. He took us around an island and we ate all sorts of things. I drew the line at the sea urchin roe, raw. He said it tasted like scrambled eggs; I just took his word for that. I guess, in any case, he would have been right no matter what it tasted ‘like’, since it was, literally, “scrambled eggs”.

@WasCy

hahaha, how cool is that! I met Marlin Perkins, the ‘Wild Kingdom’ guru. lol
My friends dad was a Mutual of Omaha franchise owner and good ol’ Marlin was a dinner guest at their home one night when I was about 11. He was a nice guy. :-)

@Coloma Oh, I got the reference. I’ve read most of his books, :)