More Morton Magic #14: Wondrous Wet-A-Bed!
This is the 14th of a 17-cache series which will take you on a wonderful 6km looping trail up the deep Morton valley through Sunnydale and The Glen passing historical farm and residential buildings, industrial ruins, mill ponds and weirs, rich deciduous and pine woodlands, a reservoir, waterfall, low moorland, farm fields and then back down an old track and flower-festooned path into the village.
The cache, a small black-taped plastic pot, is hidden just off the trail (Upwood Lane) connecting Upwood Farm with Botany.
Directions: from #13, continue to Upwood Farm, then pass through the gate, negotiating a more or less well-muddy few metres to join the footpath heading SE back down to Botany and East Morton.
Another very common and instantly recognisable member of the Asteraceae family which you will have seen in abundance on your way here - both in flower and seed - is the (common) dandelion (Taraxacum officinale).
Taraxacum is derived from the Arabic word tarakhshagog for bitter herb. The Latin species name officinale means 'of the apothecaries' and refers its medicinal properties.
Native to Europe and Asia, it was originally imported to America as a food crop and is now naturalized throughout North America, southern Africa, South America, New Zealand, Australia, and India.
It grows vigorously in temperate regions on lawns, roadsides, disturbed banks, shores of waterways, and other areas with moist soils. It is usually considered a weed, especially in lawns and along roadsides, but its leaves, flowers, and roots are used in herbal medicine and as food. Its flowers (seen March-September) only open in full sun. It produces a milky latex released when a stem is broken.
It has (had) many English common names including blowball, lion's-tooth, cankerwort, milk-witch, yellow-gowan, Irish daisy, monks-head, priest's-crown, puff-ball, face-clock, pee-a-bed*, wet-a-bed*, swine's snout, white endive, and wild endive. It's most common name dandelion comes from the French dent de lion, or 'lion's tooth' referring to its jagged-edged leaves. *it is a diuretic (see below).
In some places it is considered a noxious weed and a nuisance in residential and recreational lawns. It is
also an important weed in agriculture and causes significant economic damage because of its infestation in many crops worldwide.
It can serve as an indicator plant for soil potassium and calcium, as the plant favours soils with relatively low calcium but relatively high potassium.
It commonly colonises disturbed habitats, both from windblown seeds and seed germination from the seed bank where seeds remain viable for over 9 years. It is a somewhat prolific seed producer, with 54-172 seeds/ head with a single plant producing > 5,000 seeds/year.
When released, the seeds can be spread by the wind up to several 100m from their source and are a common contaminant in crop and forage seeds.
It is eaten by caterpillars of several Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), such as the tortrix moth Celypha rufana. Even though its pollen is of poor nutritional quality for honey bees, they readily consume it, and it can be an important source of nutritional diversity in heavily managed monocultures such as that of blueberries. Honey bees have not been shown to lower their pollination activity on nearby fruit crops when foraging on dandelions.
Food: it is harvested from the wild or grown on a small scale as a leaf vegetable. The nutritious leaves ('dandelion greens') are high in vitamins A and C, as well as iron, phosphorus, and potassium. They have a 'delicious'slightly bitter taste similar to mustard greens. Usually
young leaves and unopened buds are eaten raw in salads often accompanied with hard-boiled eggs, while older leaves are cooked and used in soups. See short video here.
The flowers can be used to make dandelion wine, for which there are many recipes. Dandelion and burdock is a soft drink that has long been popular in the United Kingdom.
Another use for the plant is dandelion flower jam. In Silesia and other parts of Poland and the world, dandelion flowers are used to make a honey substitute syrup with added lemon (so-called May-honey). Ground roasted dandelion root can be used as a non-caffeinated coffee substitute.
Medicinal Use: it has been used in traditional medicine for its diuretic properties in Europe, North America, and China (for about 2,000 years). In France, its common name is pissenlit meaning 'piss in the bed'.
Other Uses: rubber trees, mostly Hevea brasiliensi, from Brazil are used to obtain the latex required for rubber (tyre) production, but during WW2 the major powers - USSR, UK, US, and Germany - cultivated dandelions for use in rubber manufacturing. After the war ended, demand and supply gradually returned to Brazil and eventually to synthetic tyres made from petrochemicals.
Now, a major tyre company is making dandelion rubber tires (Taraxagum) and their bicycle version won the German Sustainability Award 2021 for sustainable design.
Growing almost anywhere, dandelion needs is easy to accommodate in a country or business’s agriculture profile. It can even be grown in the polluted land on or around old industrial parks.
Also, the only additive needed for rubber extraction is hot water, unlike Hevea which needs organic solvents - a pollution risk if not disposed of properly.
Finally, yellow dye can be obtained from its flowers and its latex can be used as a kind of glue.
So, as a critical early-season food supply for dwindling bees, an effective herbal medicine, a valuable source of super-nutritious food for humans, dandelions can also be turned into coffee, give children fun blowing apart their seeds - and now, a novel, sustainable alternative source for rubber . . . it is indeed a wondrous plant!
See short videos here (1 year time lapse, from seed to seed head), here (the plant that conquered the world), here (BBC Life of Plants - seed dipersal) and here (the physics of dandelion seed flight).
