Dandelion greens, the first wild food of spring

In New England the common dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, is often the first green thing worth eating once the snow goes. It grows in lawns, lots and field edges across most of North America, and it is easy to know once you have looked closely at a few plants.

Identifying it

The name comes from the French dent de lion, lion’s tooth, after the jagged leaves. Check for all of these:

• Leaves 3 to 12 inches long, lance-shaped and deeply toothed, with no hairs
• All leaves growing from a flat rosette at ground level, never up a stem
• Each yellow flower head, 1 to 2 inches across, sitting alone on a smooth, hollow, leafless stalk
• White milky sap wherever a leaf or stalk is broken
• Round white seed heads that break apart in the wind

Several plants share the yellow flower and the rosette. Cat’s ear has hairy leaves and branched, solid stalks; chicory and wild lettuce grow tall leafy stems later in the season. Those are edible, but some toxic yellow-flowered relatives, such as common groundsel and tansy ragwort, carry leaves on their flowering stems, which a dandelion never does. Eat nothing you have not positively identified.

Pick only where no herbicide, lawn fertilizer or dog traffic has reached, which rules out most manicured lawns and roadsides. Wash everything. People allergic to ragweed or latex can react to dandelion, and because the leaves are very high in vitamin K, anyone taking warfarin should talk to a doctor before eating them regularly.

Preparing them

Harvest in early spring, before the flower buds show, when the leaves are only mildly bitter raw. A stir fry wins over most doubters:

1. Gather about 3 cups of young leaves and rinse well.
2. Soften about 2 cups of sliced onion in olive oil.
3. Add the greens, some chopped garlic and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce.
4. Cook, stirring now and then, for around 15 minutes.

Young leaves also go raw into salads and sandwiches. Once the plant has flowered the leaves turn sharply bitter. They are still usable: bring a pot of water to a full boil, add the greens, drain, and repeat with fresh boiling water before cooking them as above.

Nutrition

Figures from USDA FoodData Central for 100 grams of raw leaves make the case against calling it a weed. Dandelion greens carry about 778 micrograms of vitamin K, against 483 in raw spinach, and 187 milligrams of calcium, nearly double spinach’s 99 and four times raw broccoli’s 47. Iron is 3.1 milligrams, a little ahead of spinach. Beta carotene is high at 5,854 micrograms, though carrots hold more. Older claims that the leaves supply vitamin B12 or vitamin D do not hold up; plants contain neither.

The University of Wisconsin’s dandelion fact sheet covers the plant’s biology in more depth.