All plants /Ground /Dandelion
Dandelion
Taraxacum officinale, aster family. Abundant in East and Central and West Texas.
At a glance
- What
- Leaves, flowers, roots: the whole plant
- How
- Young leaves raw, older cooked; flowers for fritters; roots roasted for tea
- When
- Cool months in Texas, November through April
- Where
- Lawns and disturbed ground everywhere
- Value
- Vitamins A and K, minerals; classic bitter green
Caution: The only real hazard is the lawn itself: harvest nowhere herbicides are sprayed. Texas false dandelions are look-alikes but harmless.
Identification
A basal rosette of backward-toothed leaves, one hollow milky stem per flower, never branched. Everything similar in a Texas lawn is at worst just less tasty.
In the kitchen
Pick young leaves before flowering for salads; wilt older ones with bacon and vinegar the way generations of grandmothers settled the bitterness argument.
Photo: Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Forages well with
Forage safely. Never eat a wild plant on this site's word alone. Confirm identity with several sources, learn the look-alikes, and when in doubt, leave it in the ground.