One man’s weed is another man’s prized food: 04 (蒲公英 / pǔ gōng yīng / dandelion)

Everyone, especially children, would know dandelion as the plant that, once its bright yellow flower goes to seed, will provide the fluffy ball for children and adults to blow and watch as the seed heads fly off or float in the air.  

    Most of the time, however, dandelion is just treated as a common weed, and ignored.  (I’m sure, though, that people in the old days, both in the East and the West, knew a lot more about its herbal / medicinal uses, which many of us in modern-day and urban living seem to have lost.)

    Foragers in Western countries know that dandelion is a food plant, with (just to name two ways) the leaves eaten raw in a salad (the Chinese don’t tend to eat their vegetables raw), or used in a thick, Western-style broth soup (which the Chinese don’t eat that much of, preferring clear soup).  There is packaged dandelion tea sold out there in supermarkets, so it’s now known more widely in this form, but still not such common knowledge among the general public, I feel.

    My personal impression of the Chinese perspective on lots of plants is that they not only look at the usual culinary range wherein the plants can be put to use (in a stir fry or a clear soup, drunk as tea, etc.), but also their uses as a TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) ingredient.  I often come across ordinary Chinese people who will know at least one use for what most Westerners dismiss as “just a weed” — cf. the shepherd’s purse story (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2024/12/one-mans-weed-is-another-mans-prized_1.html).

    When I look online at plants for their health benefits (as food and as herbal medicine), I tend to do it in Chinese — for the Chinese perspective, e.g., whether the plant is good/bad for a yin or a yang condition, which is a perspective not found that much in material provided in English.  See below for an example of what a Chinese entry will say about the health benefits of dandelion according to the Chinese perspective.  (Note the concepts of “cold” and “heat” mentioned in the second search — they are the yīn and yáng perspectives in TCM:  whether a person or a condition or a plant is a cold one or a hot one.) 

    To be fair, these days, some sites in English (the only Western language I know well enough to read research material) do also provide the reader with nutritional and health information like the vitamins and minerals in a plant, as well as what health conditions will benefit from the plant (e.g., for dandelion: inflammation, sugar levels). 

    The French call dandelion pissenlit / “piss in bed”, so you can see that it’s well known among the French as a diuretic.  

    When I was on the French farm, I’d go round the countryside and pick dandelion and nettle to stir fry with chopped-up garlic, or turn into a Western-style thick soup.  The master of the farm didn’t like spinach, but because he treated dandelion and nettle as weed, I couldn’t tell him that it was dandelion or nettle either.  Each time I’d tell him, “C’est pas épinards / it is not spinach”, which is true, so I wasn’t lying to him.  Maybe because my French is so limited, he never went on to ask what it was instead, and would eat all the dandelion and nettle soup or stir-fry that I served up for lunch or dinner.  (So that was how I managed to sneak in some healthy, and free, green leafy veg into his diet, haha.)

PS:  If you don’t know Chinese but are interested, you can always: 

1. go to google translate first, put in the English word(s) for google translate to turn into Chinese for you (e.g., dandelion health benefits, which google translate will render into 蒲公英的健康益处)
2. then copy 蒲公英的健康益处 and paste into google search 
3. The results from searching 蒲公英的健康益处, which will come out in Chinese, can go through the same process:  get google translate to turn the search results into English for you.  

(From searching under 蒲公英的健康益处) 现代医学研究发现，蒲公英可治疗上呼吸道感染、急性乳腺炎、急性阑尾炎、急性淋巴腺炎、急性支气管炎、流行性腮腺炎、胃炎、肠炎、胆囊炎、肝炎、痢疾及各种疔疮疖肿等疾病。 近几年来的综合研究发现，蒲公英同时具备“三抗作用”作用，即抗病毒、抗感染、抗肿瘤作用。

(Google translate for the above) Quote Modern medical research has found that dandelion can treat upper respiratory tract infection, acute mastitis, acute appendicitis, acute lymphadenitis, acute bronchitis, mumps, gastritis, enteritis, cholecystitis, hepatitis, dysentery and various furuncles and boils. Comprehensive research in recent years has found that dandelion has “three anti-effects” at the same time, namely anti-virus, anti-infection and anti-tumor effects. Unquote

    A bit tedious, I know, and not always reliable (although machine translations are getting better these days), but if you’re interested in the Chinese perspective on health matters, this is quicker than learning the language first.

(From another search)  Quote 中医认为，蒲公英性寒，味苦、甘，归肝、胃经，具有清热解毒、消肿散结、利湿通淋的功效。 蒲公英具有清热解毒的作用，在内可以用于治疗热毒炽盛导致的肠痈腹痛、肺热咳嗽、咽喉肿痛等疾病。 蒲公英最奇妙的地方就在于可以清热解毒的同时，不会苦寒太过而损伤脾胃。 因此《本草新编》盛赞“至贱而有大功”，适用于脾虚湿浊化热的患者。Unquote

(Google translate) Quote According to traditional Chinese medicine, dandelion is cold in nature, bitter and sweet in taste, and belongs to the liver and stomach meridians. It has the effects of clearing away heat and detoxifying, reducing swelling and dispersing knots, and promoting dampness and relieving stranguria. Dandelion has the effect of clearing away heat and detoxifying, and can be used to treat diseases such as intestinal carbuncle abdominal pain, lung heat cough, and sore throat caused by excessive heat and toxicity. The most amazing thing about dandelion is that it can clear away heat and detoxify without being too bitter and cold to damage the spleen and stomach. Therefore, the “New Compendium of Materia Medica” praised it as “very cheap but with great benefits”, and it is suitable for patients with spleen deficiency, dampness and turbidity turning into heat. Unquote

    You will see from the above search sections about dandelion that it is more than “just a weed”.