Weed or wonder drug?

If you spot a dandelion in your carefully tended herbacious border, please think twice before you reach for the garden fork, writes medical herbalist Hannah

Sylvester

When you see a bright yellow dandelion flower, sticking up from the ground, what do you think? Weed or wildflower? Opinion is usually mixed about these vibrant rays of floral sun poking up from soil and between paving slabs. After all, a weed is just a plant growing where it’s not wanted. But reader: I hope to sway your opinion towards viewing these, and much of our other wild flora, more favourably, and with new eyes. You see, all it takes is a little change of the narrative.

The dandelion was a rare but welcome feature in the suburban garden that was my childhood playground. Sadly, weed-killer played a regular part in keeping the lawn green and “tidy”. Yet, when the wild was permitted to flourish, there was glee at the opportunity of blowing dandelion clocks for wishes and making enormous daisy chains. My time in that garden sowed strong seeds of a love of wild plant life; these so-called weeds took hold, and laid deep tap roots. What flourished was a passion for working with plants as medicine and sharing the stories of our native wild plant life, how they have weaved in and out of our lives through the centuries and, in many cases, play a vital role in the health of the climate, locally and beyond.

As a member of the Asteraceae family—the daisy family—the dandelion has composite flowers meaning that, rather than being just one flower at the end of a stalk, it is comprised of multiple simple flowers, in this case, hundreds. This makes the dandelion vital for our early pollinators, who can feed on these multiple pollen sources across just one flower. It’s common for gardeners to pull them up at first sight but, this year, consider what more you can do for your local pollinators. Try leaving the dandelions as an easy food source. Then, enjoy watching the bees and other wildlife feeding from the small food crop you’ve left for them. With wildflower meadows in the UK having declined by 97% since the 1930s, and pollinator populations declining by over 30%, there has never been a more important time to embrace and actively cultivate wild flowers.

The dandelion is steeped in story and wild tales. The name itself derives from the French, dent de lion, meaning tooth of the lion, named after the tooth-like appearance of the edge of the leaves, with the golden florets of petals like a lion’s mane. Many remember stories from their childhood, recalling it being called “wet the bed” and that if you picked it, you would do just that. Of course, that’s just a tall tale, but as with all tales, there’s usually a place where the story starts.

In herbal practice, we know that dandelion leaf is a valuable diuretic and, unlike many of its pharmaceutical counterparts, doesn’t deplete the body of potassium—in fact, it actually contains potassium. As both a science and something of an art, modern-day herbal practice combines the scientific knowledge and understanding of plants with a herbalist’s medical and therapeutic understanding of the human body. Following an in-depth consultation, a herbal prescription of usually a number of different plant extracts are combined together in a medicine for each individual patient. As such, given its benefits as a diuretic, we sometimes use the leaves of dandelion as part of our prescriptions for those with high blood pressure, and also to support the function of the urinary system—but it does take a good extract of the whole herb to do this, not just picking the plant as the old tales tell! https://thedistrictherbalist. co.uk/

In the dandelion, as with much of the plant world, different parts contain different plant chemicals and qualities, and so exert differing effects on the human body. The root of dandelion is bitter, and is used to support the digestion, especially the liver, before or after eating. Bitters stimulate the taste buds, resulting in more saliva and readying the digestion for receiving food, as well as digesting it better. Combination recipes of alcoholic bitters have been commercially available and used for centuries, across Europe and beyond, as an aid to the digestive process. There are similar stories throughout history, whereby plants once played a much wider part in our day to day lives, and they can still be part of modern life, we just need to reconnect with this once common knowledge.

Curiously, nature and philosophy proffer further insights into plants and their potential connection with the human body. Historically, for example, there was the notion of the “Doctrine of Signatures”, a theory whereby the appearance of a plant was said to resemble the part of the body or illness that the plant could be helpful for. Whilst now having the benefit of many hundreds of years of anecdotal, written, and now modern research to understand how plants can be used for health, many of these old ways of seeing plants still stand up today. The yellow dandelion could be seen as one such example of this, one of the many yellow-coloured medicinal plants that have an action on bile flow; bile, which is of a yellowish hue.

Dandelions thrive so well in our gardens and urban areas partly thanks to their long tap roots that reach down to draw up moisture and nutrients from the soil below. They are survivors.

With medicinal plants such as these carrying many benefits for humans, that can sit so well alongside allopathic medication, in addition to the benefits for our local wildlife, if we will just allow them to grow more freely alongside more common garden plants and in wild local spaces, we would do well to view the dandelion and its wild counterparts more favourably. They can be providers of health and strength for us, and the wider nature with which we share this planet.

Engage with more curiosity with your local wild plants, let the wild flowers—and weeds—grow, and let’s re-ignite our knowledge and understanding of wild medicinal flora. For, surely, it will benefit people and planet alike.

Hannah Sylvester is a professional medical herbalist and nature educator, practising in Lincolnshire.