09/12/2025
🌼 Meet Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) 🌼
🦁 Belonging to the Asteraceae (daisy) family, this vibrant and resilient plant is often considered by most gardeners as a “weed”. I invite you to think again. It's common name derives from the French “dent de lion” meaning “lion’s tooth”, which refers to the deeply lobed, green leaves.
🍵 In Western Herbal Medicine, we typically utilise the leaf and root in the form of tea, tincture, powder, or juice to support health complaints such as arthritis, gout, hypertension and liver disorders.
🤤 Dandelion aids digestion by stimulating bile and gastric acid production, which enhances the breakdown of fats and other foods. Dandelion also contains prebiotic fibre (e.g. inulin) that feeds beneficial gut microbes. Safety note: seek guidance from a trained herbalist if you wish to work with dandelion for gallstones as consumption can aggravate symptoms if the bile duct is blocked.
🥗 As a wild food, consider adding a few of the young spring leaves to a salad. Once the flowers are in bloom, you could also batter and fry up some delicious dandelion pakora. Throughout history, the roasted root has been used as a coffee substitute during times of scarcity, including World War II.
🕵🏻♀️ Would you like to feel confident to identify, harvest and use seasonal plants in wild food recipes and herbal remedies? Visit honeysuckleherbal.co.uk to learn more about my 2026 events: including foraging walks and remedy making workshops!
