Dude, got some weed?  The kind you find in your lawn, that you cut with a sharp blade or douse with herbicides?

I am looking for one in particular — the dandelion.  The French named this flower dens leonis, or “lion’s tooth” referring to the jagged points on the leaves. You know the yellow flower or the puff ball after the flower goes to seed.  But dandelions offer more than momentary entertainment or irritation.

Weed ‘Em and Eat

In France people grow dandelions to eat, just as we might grow lettuce. It’s best to collect dandelion leaves in early spring and then harvest again in late fall. As Wildman Steve Brill tells us:

“Dandelion greens are wonderful in salads, sauteed or steamed. They taste like chicory and endive, with an intense heartiness overlying a bitter tinge. People today shun bitter flavors; they’re so conditioned by overly sweet or salty processed food. But in earlier times, we distinguished between good and bad bitterness. Mixed with other flavors, as in a salad, dandelions improve the flavor.”

Some good news, too, for locavores and for nervous parents. There are no poisonous look-alikes for dandelions.

And it’s a rare weed indeed that  has a book named after it:  Dandelion Wine is Ray Bradbury’s recreation of a boy’s childhood, combining moments from his life and his imagination.

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.”

I tried dandelion wine for the first time at Moon on the Pond Farm, where farmer Dominic Palumbo had just steeped a pot of dandelion flowers and was adding orange and lemons to a huge crock.

Dominic Stirs Summer with a Spoon

Then he poured a glass from a bottle of dandelion wine that had been produced last summer.

The wine was light—Prosecco light— and captivating. I wanted more. I could imagine serving it to friends with fish. Or a summer salad with watermelon. Sipping it by a lazy stream as the sun disappears into a warm, steamy night. More.

It’s time to make my own. So I am heading out late Sunday morning to pick a bag of dandelion flowers and try my hand at bottling summer.

Further Reading and Recipes

Jack Keller: More Than 42 Dandelion Wine Recipes