My Favorite Flower Might Be a Weed, But It Brings Me So Much Joy

Plus, I get to eat it

Yes, it’s the humble dandelion, that’s my favorite flower | All photos belong to the author

After the cold grey of winter, there’s finally some green. And in that green, yellow starts to pop up everywhere. It’s such a joyful combination — it’s impossible to keep a cloud over your head when walking through a meadow full of dandelions. And I get to have that meadow right in my yard.

The bees are also happy. There’s the subtle fragrance of the flowers, the bees are buzzing around, and I feel right at the center of things. This is where life happens.

When I was a kid, the dandelions blooming at the edge of my neighborhood were the heralds of joy and freedom. They meant summer was just around the corner, and with it, the end of the school year.

But today, as an adult who is responsible for her own meals and has to think every day — three times a day — about what to eat, well, the fact that dandelions are edible is another reason they’re my favorite.

It also happens that one of my nicknames is Nibbles, the little gray mouse from Tom and Jerry, who devours everything in his wake. That’s how my partner sees me.

I had always known about dandelions’ detoxifying properties. Which is why I gather some flowers every spring and dry them for herbal infusions.

I don’t recall exactly why I started eating the leaves — I must’ve have read about it somewhere. But once I started adding dandelion leaves to my salads, I couldn’t go back.

In early spring, they’re tender and lightly bitter; when you eat them, you can actually feel you’re eating something nutritious. It’s such an intensely satisfying experience that it made me give up supermarket salad greens.

By early summer, the leaves become more fibrous, and their flavor grows bolder, but they’re still delicious. Now, dandelion leaves supply my diet for most of the year, a great addition to my own garden greens.

Step 1: Locate prey. Step 2: gather.

Step 3: Enjoy enhanced taste and nutrition.

The roots are also said to have great health benefits. But the reason I’m most excited about them? Coffee.

Some dried and some fresh dandelion roots.

I love coffee, but I have digestive issues, not to mention that it doesn’t help my anxiety. Thanks to my sister, I discovered a delicious brew made from roasted dandelion roots. Sure, it’s not coffee, but it helps enormously on days when I can’t have the real thing.

Preparing the roasted dandelion roots for brewing.

The result, with a splash of milk.

The dandelion is a plant that nobody plants. Yet it is resilient, persistent, self-sufficient — and essential. A pioneer species that aerates compacted soil; a mineral pump that draws hard-to-access nutrients from deep underground and returns them to the surface, for other plants to use. It feeds the bees in early spring, and it can feed us in more ways than one.

This is nature’s design at its most elegant: one element, multiple functions, maximum output, nothing wasted, nothing superfluous. And from our side of the equation — no input required whatsoever. We get all those services for free. It’s perfection.