The delights of dandelions

Pause with that trowel! And don’t dream of spraying noxious chemicals. The dandelion is full of useful substances. Its leaves and flowers contain a massive range of vitamins, and the lecithin in its yellow flowers detoxifies the liver. (Bear that in mind when waking with a thick head in the morning.)

In Greece, they add tasty young dandelion leaves to salads and use them with roast lamb. They’re good fried with bacon, too, as an alternative to spinach. And the milky white stuff that comes out of a dandelion’s stem is valuable as well. The old herbalists used it to ease the pain of wounds and bee stings.

All that apart, the dandelion does a great service to other plants. It has a long taproot, as tidy-minded gardeners know to their despair, but this brings minerals and nutrients up from deep below the surface, making them available to shallower-rooted plants. That’s why primroses do so well when there’s the odd dandelion around.

As Pink Floyd might have said, ‘Hey, gardener – leave them dandelions alone.’