Dandelions and Civilization: A Forgotten History
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ค. 2024
- Dandelions are among the most populous and widespread plants on earth. The secret to their success has to do both with their unique characteristics, and their inextricable connection to humans. The history of humans and dandelions is forever linked in ways that may surprise you.
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.
Here's an awesome song about dandelions by an artist who happens to be a former student of mine. You can buy his music at the link provided. Really, he is a great guy. www.amazon.com/Dandelion-Girl...
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Script by JCG
#history #thehistoryguy #botany
I never understood the hate for dandelions. I think they're beautiful. I guarantee that if they were rare people would seek them out and plant them.
Yeah I never would have thought of that. But now you said it I agree.
i have also felt the same way... i think its crazy people try to poison their own land just to get rid of these wonderful flowers
In Asia they actually do
They compete out native species and even if you like that kind of flower, there are native equivilents everywhere that are better for the surrounding wildlife which has already evolved to suit them. Their ground hugging leaves also kill any surrounding grass and provide a food source for pests.
i mean yea, you can say that about anything, if it were rarer people would want it more. That isnt really saying much, I do agree that dandelions are nice though
My grandpa always maintained that if dandelions were harder to raise, everyone would want them.
r strong Wise grandpa
Meanwhile we searched our entire city for dandelions to feed our rabbit.
The difference between a flower and a weed is: One you try to grow - and can't. The other you try to kill - and can't.
@@jeffreyzheng8875 I love them for feeding animals and people, but around my place the Interstate Highway 55 most likely makes those near said highway toxic if only slightly.
@@jeffreyzheng8875 Did you try the parks? Probably the best thing would be to get out of the city, and go to a county or state park. Take a walk along the river, go to historical sites etc. If you want to be sure the ones you are collecting in the city have not been sprayed, I suggest collecting dandelions from alongside or behind abandoned buildings where the property owner has not been investing any time or money.
Dandelions are often one of the first plants to get kids into nature because of how they disperse their seeds. My son is just discovering them now and he is totally enraptured.
I remember as a kid trying to get the yellow dandelion petals to change into the white airborne seeds by folding the petals up 😂 definitely one of my first introductions!
Treasure the memories ❤
My mother insisted that God created the dandelion so that kids would have flowers to pick and not get yelled at.
Make a wish, then blow 🌬
Yes! That, and they are among the most common early flowers any kid will encounter, and no adult will tell them not to pick and play with them. Dandelions FTW!
Yes, thumbs up for dandelions. When we lived in a city, we did not mow the lawn until after the carpet of dandelions had finished flowering (ignored the neighbors!). One sunny day, as I idly looked out the window, a mother walked with her two or three-year-old boy. After they rounded the corner, he spotted the dandelions. His little arms opened, his face lit up and he ran to the middle of the lawn and, laughing, sat among the dandelions with a happy shout: "Gold flowers! Gold flowers!" He laughed, his mother smiled, I smiled. Long live dandelions!
What a Beautiful little story! Blessings to you and yours! 😊
Awww, that's so cute! 😁
Whenever my 2 year go for walk. I get a handful of dandelion flowers. It smells so good😊
It's the first "Mommy I love you" flower.
So true. 🏡 😎 😍
@@bweaver1930
Unbelievable rude reaction of that school teacher.
Some people shouldn't be working with kids.
Awe. That's cute and commonly true.
Probably my daughters favorite flower. Breaks her heart when I pull them from the lawn. Somthing very primal there... it's hard to wrap ones head around.
@@bweaver1930 Sounds like that teacher was a rude idiot.
As a beekeeper, the emergence of dandelions is a welcome sight. It is one of the earliest blooming food sources for bees.
We use the dandelion as our sign to put the supers on the hives.
yeah, ive always like them, more so now that im a beekeeper too, had to leave a comment about it being good food for bees too.
In Australia, a number of our native bees benefit greatly from the Dandelion too.
Both my neighbor and I have replaced our lawns with clover & dandelion. Why fight nature? It's a beautiful sight.
crazy that they give the nectar, but dont need fertilization by bees.
I have no idea how this page came up but this was 💯. I'm part Greek and we eat dandelion greens "radikia"
almost every day. I buy organic dandelion greens at least twice a week we boil them for about 10 min In drinking water. Drink the water as tea. Then we add good Greek olive oil, pink salt and lemon. You can eat it as a side dish. It's so good for your liver too. I remember when I was young my grandmother would stop me while I was driving when she would see a clean piece of grass that had dandelions and she would pick them. It's one of the foods she survived during the World War II in Greece when there was no food.🌼💛
Neato!
As a resident of Melbourne, Australia (largest Greek city outside of Greece) I condone this op. As a kid I used to see all the old Greek nanas collecting wild dandelions beside the train tracks and wondering why they didn’t just eat canned peas like a regular Australian lol. It was only years later that I realised they survived starvation in WWII by doing this and also (tikanis, Boleh kala) that it tastes bloody awesome! Yasu mate….
Thank you for the recipe, I shall try it today!
@@planetdisco4821 🥰
@@bigboss-tl2xr 👍
I'm from Poland and my mom used to make "dandelion honey", which is made by boiling the flowers and adding sugar. It tasted like real honey too!
A lot of vegans do this if they want to use honey
I've made dandelion honey. It's surprisingly good.
I'm a beekeeper in Italy and I can confirm this recipe a friend from Poland told me, actually tastes really good! I don't think it tastes much like honey, but it has that "flower" character you can find in honey and pollen also.
Great recipe! And great episode: this guy amazes me
Thank you! I look forward to trying this.
Thank you. I am going to try to make that recipe.
I live in Texas and when finally decided I would scatter no more poison on my land the dandelion emerged triumphant. I save a fortune the pastures look beautiful in bloom the bees and butterflies are abundant. Yes I lost to the dandelions but still came out the winner.
*you did not lose...you and the dandelions just have an understanding and mutual respect for each other and life is all the more sweeter because of that*
I live in the former East Germany where nobody cares about dandelions. I was shocked the first time I saw a field of them! 😆 No body sprays weeds here. Roundup is sold in a small spray bottle behind a locked glass door. Totally funny considering the gallons of it my neighbor used to spray over his land. I LOVE not ever smelling Roundup in the air, despite being surrounded by farms. Even farms here don't use stenchy chemicals. It's wonderful!!!
Carlos I love your comment
In Canada they make for good target practice with hockey sticks.
There 2 winners 🙏👍💯🎉
"A weed is just a flower in the wrong place"
Thank you. LOL
Wrong requires expectation. No expectation, everything is alright.
Most weeds are edible something you all need to consider you never know when you might be extremely grateful for the wild edible weeds🌏🌏🌏👽
"The only difference between a flower and a weed is a weed has a greater will to live." - Garfield
Truth.
I never understood why anybody would want a boring sterile lawn without these beautiful little flowers.
I feel like it's people who can't really think for themselves and only chase the elusive idea of pure conformity that want to get rid of them.
I mean you have to be really sad inside to not see the gift of these little yellow suns.
🎉❤I agree
When my pain is not having a pure wildflower lawn over the perfect lawn, then i look around and see a few neighbours in my part of the village doing the same, by letting poppies and long grass grow. makes me feel like i belong or like i’m part of some unspoken movement.
Well said!!❤
TRUTH! ❤
Judgmental much?
seeking a "perfect" green lawn is a disease; we always let our dandelions grow in our yard in boulder in the 70s and 80s......................... It's cool to see episodes like this
People wanting perfect lawns is the reason why Homeowners use more herbicides than Farmers.
I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people who use herbicides on weed consider them *_"environmentally conscious"._*
Home Owner's Associations are a crime against nature.
Just moved to Broomfield Colorado and all the neighbors hate that I let the dandelions grow
@@skinny771 This could be a good way to tell who the new neighbors are ;-)
The reason our lawn looks so good is because of our dandelions and other wild flowers. The roots of the dandelions aerate the soil and make our lawn more fertile. And when they bloom , it is spectacular.
I totally agree about how cool dandelions & wildflowers are, too- I’m in Kansas, where there used to be no houses around, & the few acres of land we own looked amazing;but now there are houses choking the edges & you can see where our natural land meets the chemicals that run off their property & bleed into our field.
They're also more likely to take root in loose soil. Let them grow and soon enough the soil will be healthy enough to grow thick grass.
I bet it looks great.
I started keeping them in my yard when I noticed a duck feeding on the leaves of one, and noticing the insects that visit the flowers and it got me thinking that by removing them I am taking away a food supply from nature. Nature needs all the help it can get these days. Love the confused looks of people who admire my well cultivated garden that has dandelions all over the place.
I live on the 3rd floor of a newer apartment, have no balcony and have extremely limited growing space (thanks to rail hooks and a couple hangign baskets). I've had such a hard time getting anything to grow so I started dandelions this spring. They're so easy to grow and I can't wait to eat my first dandelion salad!
The long tap root makes deep minerals available to other plants.
They also provide competition for other pests to eat instead of your cultivated plants so the plants you like get nibbled less.
@@greenteabear-fb7stI wonder how Americans can get Japanese dandelions in other colors. I always wanted to try that. They might be gorgeous.
Then there's Plantain (not the banana looking plant) That ruins your lawn but is medically and nutritionally very beneficial yet it makes your lawn ugly so it's hard to know what to do. I tend to just keep some and get rid of the rest, same with dandelions, There's so many I don't need them in my lawn because there's always a ton of places that they grow undisturbed and people who don't get rid of them in their lawns. I eat them using the flowers which are the tastiest part and tje leaves although they're a bit bitter, and the roots for tea.
I’m from a tropical country where we don’t see dandelions. I was delighted to find them growing all around me when I moved to the US for studies. Ever so often I take a bunch and make tiny floral arrangements for my room. But to my dismay, I found out people don’t like them as much. Every time the dandelions are in full bloom, the landscapers mow them. 😢
I love the rich vibrant yellow color of Dandees. I remember when My Mother had bought a box of Dandelion tea when she started getting into herbal healing way back in the 1970s. I used to think the tea was different from the flowers on the ground. I didn't start consuming it until I learned its a cure & preventative of Canser in 2005. I realized the real reason there is a massive effort to kill them.
At Calke Abbey in the UK they let the dandelions grow in huge numbers on some parts of the estate. Some hills are completely yellow and it looks surprisingly nice this time of year.
Lady’s and gentlemen I give you the only man able to get me to click on a video with dandelion in the title... and keep me watching for 11.5 minutes
Me too. (:
Well ok then I suppose I am also in this category
Yep.
Got me as well!
Ditto
Soak the yellow flower in salt water (cleans and removed any bugs), then coat in flour and fry. My grandmother used to cook them.
I was just introduced to fried dandelions by a friend recently. Delicious i must say
That sounds like a depression dish! it also sounds really interesting, much like adding the leaves to salad and toasting the roots to make a coffee substitute.
I always eaten it as a salad. ..
Work's amazingly is you have iron deficiency. ...
But hearing of vine, I must found it and try it...
I am gonna try this ♥️💛♥️
If you're not a vegan, eat the bugs.
I'm happy to see so many people understanding and appreciating the dandelions!👍👏🎉
You might like the old german kids show "Löwenzahn" (dandelion). It was a guy, living in a tiny house in a nice garden, explaining stuff about the environment and technology - the intro was dandelions growing from every crack and eventually overgrowing a city. Good times
All my neighbors poison the ground with weed killer while mine has dandelion and clover patches ,it's beautiful .
Good for you. I think we should do away with monotonous "lawns". So much water wasted, so many toxins and chemicals poured into the ground (and ground water) for a stupid, boring expanse of just *green* . Everyone needs to have a bit more natural variety in their gardens and yards.
Most of our yard is clover and dandelions. My grandmother didn't like them and tried to take out any she could with the hoe.
I don't mind dandelions, clover or violets, but that creeping Charlie has got to go.
Clover is a nitrogen fixer too. People kill weeds because they think they’re stealing nutrients from their grass, but often they’re doing the opposite.
I bet there's cute natives that could benefit from your benign neglect. Visit a natural preserve nearby to find them, or find the website of your local native plant society.
Hmm...if a uniform lawn is desired, how about I kill off all the grass and replace it entirely with dandelions?
LOL, A lovely idea, but your neighbors would hate you. But on the plus side, bumblebees and butterflies would thankk you greatly!
Also! Try clover! It doesn't get as tall, and also produces flowers! And there isn't a need to mow!
I'm guessing it's against dandelion strategy to establish itself in one spot. It must require disturbed soil and little competition. It probably has to yield to meaner invasives like the wild radish and the wild mustard after a while.
There is also a short walkable thyme that’s pretty
difficult - most herbicides interfere with a process in the broad leafs (they mimic auxin); herbicides that kill grass will tend to kill everything
When I was a kid we had a large yard with beautiful dandelions. I would sit for hours and make dandelion chains, I’d pick dandelion bouquets, I’d flick their heads off to a poem, make a joke with them to friends and gross them out- I LOVED how bright and cheery they were, and the unique shape of their pettles. And then the MOST magical thing happened when they were ready to seed- I’d blow the seeds and make a wish, I’d pretend to be Belle from Beauty and the beast and sing her songs, I’d take each seed off one by one just to see how they stuck to the inside. I LOVED dandelions. As an adult, I enjoy dandelion tea, and happily eat the greens in salads when offered. I never understood why people don’t like dandelions- and as a teenager needed to be told not to blow the orbs as I walked past city folk lawns.
🎉❤I love your story.. blow those orbs! I will today..& I'll make a wish!
I used to say that poem but can’t remember it now.
The genetic diversity hidden in dandelions is amazing!
I found a little dandelion like the ones that grow in Southern California by the docks in Hilo, Hawaii, took it home and put it in a planter.
When it's seeds came I planted them too.
The dandelion seeds that came from the original dandelion I found by the docks grow 8-10 feet tall plants in Hawaii.
I've had this strain of dandelions growing in my yard organically for about 12 years.
10:17
Holy shit, a 10 ft tall dandelion. That plant asserts its own dominance
@@skylerthompson8652I have shallow dirt and low quality soil in my yard.
My friend tells me that sugar cane grows bigger and sweeter in Puerto Rico, mangoes, papayas, and guavas grow bigger and sweeter there too; because they have much richer soil.
There's got to be places where dandelions grow over 10 feet tall.
Wow that sounds incredible, do you have any pictures of them?
@@topsideplanet234Yep, who wouldn't take pictures of giant dandelions that grew from tiny dandelions?
one other thing tangentially related. Dandelions are often the first flower of spring and the first food source for bees after a long winter.
Plant early-blooming native wildflowers and shrubs instead. Dandelion pollen lacks key amino acids that wild pollinators need to reproduce.
@@Nebelwerfer210cm Thanks for info but bees love them and as it seems they need all the help they can get due to our "lawn free weeds"..... trying to copy the worthless wealthy that have destroyed most everywhere natural.
@@womanoftheozarks You're right, they do need help. So, like, actually try helping.
🐝🌼🐝🌼🐝🌼🐝🌼🐝🌼
Yes, bees still do like dandelions even if they don't really need to be crosspolinated.
A weed is a plant that you do everything to kill and it keeps growing. A plant is something that you do everything to keep alive and it die' s.
I've always called a weed a perfectly fine plant growing where it is not wanted. Corn is a weed in a soybean field.
@@joezeigler1064And roses were considered weeds at on time.
@@july8xx interesting
Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous...same family as nightshade
@@joezeigler1064 YES! PLEASE, History Guy, do a story on theTomato!
@Wade Haden
Both were "New World" crops. Cherry tomatoes were taken to England and planted as ornamental hedges for their bright red fruits...the large beefsteak type tomato was developed much later in Ohio. Yes potatoes are also nightshade family but the roots were eaten so maybe that was considered safe. Bright red commonly signifies poisonous. I could be wrong about all of this...
My grandmother used dandelions for wine making and cooked the leaves as greens.
Thank you, History Guy, for this episode.
My Oma (grandma) credited the dandelion for helping her family survive the last few months of WW II. It was something the family was able to forage to feed themselves after food became scarce twords the end and even after the war. I still make dandelion salad at the start of spring when the plant is still tender and young. The rest of the year I let them grow over the summer and then let my geese forage on it just before the first frost !
I pick some daily for my chickens. I probably have the healthiest chickens in town! I also dry them and add to their feed in the winter. 🙂
The War of the Dandelions is over. My front lawn is a testament to this. They have won.
I like to describe my lawn as an urban habitat.
The bees will thank you
Lol
Only place I actively fight the dandelion is in my vegetable garden. There free to colonize the rest of my lawn but war is waged in the garden.
@@maro7125 I don't use pesticides, never did I know how harmful they are. I dig them up by hand. Or I should say dug. I quit!!!!
Thank you for this! As beekeepers, we appreciate dandelions because they are the first post-winter nectar/food source for honey bees, native bees, and other pollinators. Dandelions are the life-giving food pollinators need in early spring before other flowering plants have blossomed.
We put our "supers" on when the dandelions start to bloom.
Like Asian carp, we should always be happy for non-native, invasive species.
@@ReflectedMiles always happy for invasive species? Carp is cool but privet and wisteria are destroying natural and balanced ecosystems
I watched this video because my husband has been a long time dandelion fan. I sent him this video, and I'm sure he'll love all these extra facts to bolster his advocacy for this much misunderstood wildflower. Your presentation is great, and I'm now a subscriber!
You won’t regret the subscription! Not every video will get a play, but he is bound to put one out that puts a smile on your face sooner rather than later. This channel has become the chicken soup of my TH-cam viewing.
I used to bring my mother bouquets of dandilions that I picked on the way home from school. She always proudly displayed them in a small vase she kept just for them.
I learned years later that my great grandmother, a poet, wrote a beautiful poem called "my darling dandyline" that made me realise that I wasnt the only one who loved them.
Dandelion jelly tastes like wild honey. (The dandelion flowers are often the first Spring food source for bees.)
Yes! Every year my daughter and i pick dandelions and make jelly!
How do u make it I would like to try it. And ive never had dandelion coffee sounds good 👍🏻
And wine.
I learned you can make bread too imagine if you mix the jelly with homemade butter and and spread it on dandelion toast
Dandelion roots as coffee or tea.
Another one is polkweed, careful how you prepare it though.
th-cam.com/video/fRF24LY5pvw/w-d-xo.html
The one thing I really like about this channel is that you can play it without having to watch the video. I play the videos in my work truck over the stereo, it's almost like a mini-info-podcast. One of the BEST information channels available on TH-cam!
Mark The Shark
I do the same thing when I go on road trips. My kid doesn’t realize she’s learning lol
Me to, love that about this channel!
I as well do this on the way to and from work. House chores as well.
I just thought of /did this this week on a road trip!
I'm in the same boat. Just listening is highly enjoyable!
as a forager and a lawn hater, I love dandelions! They're wonderful to cook or make teas with, and i love their rebelious and weedy nature. They're like the kindest punk kid you've ever known
Dandelions are a great lesson in persistence and perseverance. With all the methods man has tried to rid the world of them, they are still with us. Keep up the resistance, Dandelions, you are beautiful.
I love dandelions! So do our bumblebees and butterflies! 💕
Honey bees too.
Dandelions are among the first flowers of spring to feed newly awakened pollinators.
He said dandelions set seed asexually - no pollen needed and each seed is a clone of the parent. So why would they produce pollen and nectar?
@@LuckyBaldwin777 They are probably self pollinating.
chickens love dandelion greens and all the vitamin A in the leaves will given the extra dark, rich yolks. one of the reasons why cheap factory farmed eggs have such pale watery yolks is because they mainly just eat soybeans and corn with some high fat byproducts like bean cake (like sesame seeds after the oil has been expressed) so the only vitamin A they get is the tiny bit thats in the corn.
i deliberately allow Dandelions to grow in my lawn until they have nice big leafs. I then carefully remove the plant with its main root for my tortoises who love them and they are extremely good for them.
Used to have an Iguana that loved them....miss you Chester
What lucky tortoises to have such a caring owner!
well thank you. I have had them for 35 years and its likely I will have to hand them on when I get too old as they are likely to outlive me :o/
Fields of dandelions remind me of my childhood, and they always make me smile.
I am a horticultural therapist and I personally have always loved dandelions. They are beautiful and bloom early and in a mild winter bloom even in the midst of winter. Like a ray of sunshine
Hey there! I came across your comment and I just had to reach out and say hi. Your perspective really caught my attention and I would love to get to know you better. Would you be interested in chatting sometime? Looking forward to hearing back from you! 😊
My grandma told me about dandelions. The depression era people had skills we should remember.
There's a few people making depression era foods on youtube, telling of the history of the dishes and how good or poor they were. These can be very interesting to watch.
Dandelion wine is wonderful when done right. Dandelions are such happy little flowers!
Pearly Everlasting I’ve never had it, but my great aunts used to make it...they were all born in the 1800’s! I wish I had known what parts I could’ve eaten as a child, as our huge lawn was full of them! I would’ve been the healthiest child in our suburb!
This was great! I’m now adding this to my personal pantheon of ways to bore my co-workers when they rudely interrupt me from reading a book on my lunch break. Other go to subjects include: the history of salt. The birth of the metric system and its baseline metrological standards. The taxonomy and life cycles of the giant south Australian cuttlefish (apanama sepia btw, thanks for asking) and why they predominately tend breed in an oligotrophic inverse estuary ….. and now the correlation between dandelions and civilisation! I live for information like this and I love this channel for it…
They're some of the first flowers to offer nectar to our native bees so really important. I'm in the UK, and it used to be that our councils mowed the grass and wildflower verges, and in some cases weedkiller might have been used. It's lovely to see that they are left alone now all along the lanes and roundabouts, giving the pollinating insects plenty to feed on and more corridors to get to other flowers in other areas. Mowing comes later, when the flowers have died off. My mother used to make dandelion wine, and leaves in salads. During the war they made dandelion coffee. I love to see the dandelions, daisies and buttercups in my lawn. Perfectly tended and short-mown green lawns are just so sterile looking! I've noticed now that that dandelion season is more or less over, I'm seeing in their places false dandelion (hypochoeris radicata), equally pretty and rather nice as a cut flower for the vase.
Dandelions have always been my favorite flower. They always make me smile. Well manicured lawns do not.
Aww, so cute.
I love to see a well manicured lawn, even though I feel it is a gross waste of space.
This is the kind of video I didn't know I needed until I watched it 👌
Who knew :)
😂☕
I find myself thinking that, surprisingly often, when watching videos by History Guy. 👍
Righto! It's a sea-change.
I remember one time going for a walk in a woods near my home. There was a farmers field that had been left to go fallow and it was totally carpeted with bright yellow. As I got closer I saw that it was entirely made up of dandelions. It was beautiful. I won’t ever look at them the same way again.
I love dandelions! I have 2 rabbits that cleared my whole backyard in one day. They are working on the sides now. I had no idea they would eat that much.
Dandelion wine is absolutely delightful, and I know my grandmother used to eat dandelion salads.
I like them. They are beautiful. One of my favorite flowers.
Me, too. And the seed puffs are fun to make a wish on then blow them out into the wind :)
Do you leave them alone or kill them in your yard?
@@linda7545 Do you kill them?
@@liliencalvel6151 No way.
When they are in bloom I put off mowing.
Thank you. It was very interesting and educational.
Liked and subscribed.
With the recent food supplies being what they are, this is welcome knowledge. A return to past ways of thinking will be critical, in my honest opinion. An excellent video. Thank you.
Dandelions were among the first greens to come up in the spring and provided essential nutrients to the people coming out of the winter diets. The introduction and spread of it across north america was deliberate by those pioneers
I just picked a handful of small dandy lion leaves, washed, dried, chopped & warmed up with my eggs.
As a kid, my mom would give peach baskets to my brother, sister & I to fill with the blossoms. She made a pretty good wine!
It just spred
@@savage22bolt32 you can make a wine?!
@@grtwhtbnr yes, from the blossoms!
My mom's would always be cloudy, but its a white wine & I loved being able to taste test it with her.
@@savage22bolt32 thank you for sharing. Do you know how she did it?
In the northen hemisphere it is the first food of bees in the spring, could be a life saver knowing the tough predicament these invaluable creatures are in .
That's why I don't pull them :)
Plant early-blooming native wildflowers and shrubs instead. Dandelion pollen lacks key amino acids that wild pollinators need to reproduce.
As a beekeeper our spring schedule revolves around first dandelion flower. From first dandelion it’s 3 weeks till bees will be starting swarm preps and time for spring splits.
@@jonp.6131 My neighbors have no idea my lawn is saving the planet!
@Max Kruchowski No, I work at a native plant nursery for an ecological restoration firm. Dandelions are like junk food to native wild pollinators, they'll keep them alive, but it isn't the healthiest option. If you want to actually improve habitat for wild pollinators, it will require some effot. Stop kidding yourselves that you are "helping" by not doing anything.
You really ought to do a review of the humble cardboard box. Cardboard is amazing stuff, found everywhere in the world. It made shipping far less expensive and really did change the world.
Love your show!
That's a great idea!
and every kid can have a fort.
I'm 71 and this week, for the first time in my life, we made two quarts of 'poor man's honey' or Dandelion honey. The recipe we followed gives our concoction an artisan flavored honey taste.
Dandelions are pretty, and are useful to us. I find dandelions a nice spot of yellow in a green carpet. We used to eat them, make wine and coffee out of them. It's not really a weed, dandelions open the ground with their long tap roots. Thank you for this informational video.💛💚💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛
Thank you for Highlighting my comment. Dandelions away in the wind!!!🌲🌾🍃🌼🌼🌹🌻🌿🌿🏵💐🍀☘💮🌺🌺🌷🌸🌱🌱🌲🌾🍃🍃🌼🌼🌹🌻🌻🌻🌿🌿🏵💐🍀☘💮🌺🌷🌸🌸🌱🌲🌲🌾🍃🌼🌼🌹🌹🌻
In Maine quite a few folks eat dandelions and they are sold at farmers markets and the seeds are sold from local seed co. Up here as well.
When I was a kid in the 1950s, it was common to call the floating seeds, "Falling Stars." Trying to catch one was great fun. It was considered good luck to catch one and keep it in your pocket. Perry Como, a very popular contemporary singer in those years even did a song "Catch a Falling Star." I think this idea is a very old folk tradition that seems to have been completely forgotten.
Love the history lesson. It would have been great to hear about the 'make a wish' folk tale. Where one is to blow all the seeds in one breath while making a wish. It's one of my oldest and most vivid memories or pastimes from my mom.
I LOVE dandilions - free flowers!
And free food.
During the Great Depression, Dandelion soup was staple for some people.
Mark James And salad.
@Vee Kee I was told by a survivor of the Yugoslavian breakup that if one found a dandelion, it was a real treat.
Dandelion and Burdock is a popular soft drink in the NE of England
ive already started a garden
@@alexcarter8807 probably because instead of letting some seed so there could be more they ate every one they found root and all. If that's not the case then they wouldn't have been rare at all. You'd think one of them would have had some foresight.
This is wonderful! I find myself pulling the dandelions I see in my neighborhood to try to prevent their speed spread because I had internalized a negative attitude of them being a weed, but in addition to this history I've since learned that they can also be really helpful for bringing deep nutrients up toward the surface which can help other plants when they compost. I love the idea of getting rid of the manicured lawn, but I still have some anxiousness about dandelions taking over everything 😅
I loved this so much!!! The Dandelion is the flower of the Military Child (I'm a Navy brat) because they're tenacious (edited to fix "tenuous"), put down strong roots easily, and they're EVERYWHERE!
Nice! Oh, BTW, I think you mean "tenacious," not "tenuous" - maybe it was just a typo. Just FYI 😊
@@audrod81 Oh, criminy, you're absolutely correct! Good catch! Thank you!
Before I even watch this, my grandmother was so poor growing up in the 1st 2 decades of the 1900's, they had to collect dandelions along the roads on many days to make dandelion salad so they could eat
Early colonists had contests for the most prolific growth on a lawn. Later it was scorned as a weed. Rockefeller likely.
@@an-tm3250 Henry Ford loved to est them
Often considered a "superfood" there's no reason we shouldn't eat them today as some of us do.
My Bearded Dragons & tortoises LOVE dandelions- I also like them-
Food Not Lawns! I'm a retired farmer but made a good part of my living growing Dandelion Greens, the upright Catalogna type for the organic market. It has become a popular bitter green for health as we are realizing our past ignorance.
My city does a thing called no mow May where you won't get penalized for not mowing your lawn for the month of May. It's to allow plants like Dandelions to flower so that nectar gathering insect species can have something to eat weeks before most other flowers start to bloom.
I knew a lovely 90+ year old lady who ate dandilions every day she could get them. She would excitedly tell us the benefits of eating them and encourage us to eat them too. Couldnt argue with her logic...I couldnt keep up with her! And she was always happy! 😃😄😆
My grandparents ate them every spring.
My grandmother made dandelion wine
from the flowers all summer long. They
also had a huge veggie garden that
provided them with canned vegetables
throughout the winter. And, they raised
their own livestock for slaughter (had
a smoke-house too).
@David Copper...
Great news!
I wonder if their happy, cheerful flowers contain properties that help cause happiness.
90+ and eating tons of weed killer? Um, not smart.
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 There was no weed killer on the Dandlions my friend ate. Or...obviously they would be dead. Only wild dandelions. Um, smart!
Carbondale Colorado also has Dandelion days.
The city won't spray for weeds either.
Those who hate dandelions havent dealt with tumbleweeds in shorts!
*good for them*
Love me some plant/culture history. My favorite of your videos so far is the gooseberry-white pine video. Amazing how something so small shaped the culture of entire continents & hardly anyone knows. Thank you for doing what you do🌻
Love the Spring Dandelions in my salads. I roared with laughter at the ' Earth nail' so apt! 🤣
In the UK there is a soda called dandelion and burdock (another plant root) its great , it tastes a little like Doctor Pepper.
Neet!
They have it at World Market here in the US.
@@caitojones3140 Thank you!
My 85 year old father, still picks dandelion greens before flowering. Boils the greens down and freezes them. Great to put in with your boiled boiled veggies.
i only cook mine once,,,
@@dizzywilliams3557 What about in the Winter?
Dandelions were a popular green veggie for alot of people who lived through the great depression, dandelion salads were popular until the end of WW2 when supermarkets became common and made lettuce cheap and available.
They’re decent as a fresh salad.
Picks them before flowering. Do you mean the yellow flower or when it turns to the white puffy seeded flower? My mom use to boil the greens and have them with our boiled dinner. I remember asking her-- one day in the summer-- if she wanted me to pick some more of those greens. She said that they would be too strong at this time of year. I'm just confused when someone says " before flowering". Please reply if you can.
Dandelion salad was a fave on our table, when I was a youngster. My Italian nonna made wonderful dishes from it. And to this day, along the riverwalk here in New Orleans, I go out and pick them. They require a good bit of rinsing and prep, but the result makes it worth it: flavor and taste when in a mixed green salad. yum...
Dandelions are just beautiful! Bright yellow splashes on the lawn that announce spring, followed by cute little puffs that fly around when you walk through. My dog loves to munch on them in the backyard.
I adore dandelions. They're bright and happy, they cannot be defeated, and they're actually useful. Seeing them pop up in my yard tells me spring has arrived. 😊
It is so admirable of you, sir, to speak for this humble and may i say 'downtrodden' plant.
I Am The Lorax I speak for the trees and by trees I mean all plants
We reagularly eat dendelions as jelly. You pick the young flowerheads, then pick the blossom leaves from them (you do not want anything green), wash and boil them. Then you add sugar about 1.5 to 2x the weight of the boiled flowers and cook it again. It's very tasty. Sometimes we have dandelion salad, too. But it can be pretty bitter pretty fast, so it's not everybodys taste. A bit like rocket salad. But most commenly we use it to feed our pet chinchillas with. They love it ^^ And I'm happy that it's a plant that starts to grow early in the year and stops late, so for the most part I don't have to worry about feeding the little fur balls. Especially because they grow everywhere, but my vegetable beds. Even on that stupid wall, a left over from an old building we can't tear down because of the properties static (it supports a hill, where the neighbour's house is build upon).
Another great video! I took can just play the vid and listen to your narration. Thanks H- Guy!!
I was raised on dandelion greens because my grandparents loved them. Many a time my grandmother would call me to go with her to gather dandelions and when older ask me to bring her some. So here is their recipe for dandelion salad
The best time to harvest them are when you see the yellow blooms. As they seed they get bitter
Dig the dandelions from the ground keeping the root intact. They are easier to handle and clean that way Clean in cold water carefully making sure to open the leaves while keeping them attached to the root. You can cut the root off before making the salad. Pick as much as you can find and inspect them for the best specimens as you clean them.
Then boil one egg for each person you plan to feed until hard boiled and put into the refrigerator until the dish is ready to serve
In a deep pan cook 6 strips of bacon until just crispy and save the grease in the pan. Just move the pan off the burner for now.
Dice one medium onon or two green onions for each person you plan to serve and set aside
Wash the dandelions and the cut off the root but keep the leaves attached to each other and serve them that way rather than have lots of individual leaves. After you clean the leaves put them in a collander, spray them once more with water and set them aside to drain.
Take the eggs from the fridge and slice, keeping the yolk in the whites if possible. Set aside
Now to make the dressing . Remove 1/2 of the grease from the pan and on low heat, heat the remaining grease. Gently pour 1/4 cup of wine vinegar or raspberry vinegar in the grease and whisk it to deglaze the pan.
Place the dandelions in a large serving bowl and pour the vinegar and grease over them. Add the bacon and onions and stir togethet to coat all with the vinegar/grease mixture
Garnish with the egg slices to look like the dandelion flowers and serve.
Thanks 🙏 That’s really helpful
@@patrickdewitt1635 Hope you enjoy!
Thank you for that sir. I cannot wait to try it.
@@txtardis7887You are very welcome. Let me know if you liked it. Buon apetite!
Thank you that was very cool of you , this totally looks doable , I'm going to try .
Thank you for the recipe and all the effort you put to write it out , sounds awesome.
Looks doable 2
I am not going to lie: dandelions completely fascinate me. There are two reasons for this. First, they are impossible to kill, and if you pull them up, always unsuccessfully, they grow back spikier, meaner and coarser -- as if they have a vengence. Second, the flowers reproduce themselves after death. They grow to seed after you pluck the flowers.
They are like you and me. Us. Humans. We are resilient as Dandelions! And they have many lessons to share.
Spiker? What? They don’t have spikes probably something else you have in your yard that looks like it.
@@blackkennedy3966 do you go outside of course there’s ones with spikes
@Black Kennedy oh they have spikes. I've gotten poked quit another trying to get rid of them
I once plucked a dandelion flower whole out of the ground and left it in a pond right before winter. It literally survived all winter. The roots never froze. The pond froze and the flower looked healthy. Absolutely cold tolerant plants
I love dandilions. I make dandilion wine, use the leaves and flowers in salads, they are great for pollinators, beautifully yellow, i used to make flower crowns with them as a kid
and near my house they are doing agricultural research to enhance dandilions for rubber production. amazing plant!
Great! I live in Italy but I'm from Vineland! In Italy we use wild greens all the time(when they're in season). I was really happy to know that my rural past in the States is still connected.
I love having dandelions in my yard. My bearded dragons love to eat them, greens and flowers, so every spring/summer I have a wealth of free food for my lizards that they're crazy about.
they make a great spring salad! :)
City folk pay a pretty penny for dandelion greens in the spring where i'm from.
I used to encourage these beauties in my flower garden... They are like mini sun's!!!!!
*a very poetic way of viewing them...will have to remember that one and share it with others*
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where I'm from, they're still widely used. Dandelion honey is very popular as is the tea. The tea is especially good for diabetics. I remember older folks using the roots as a substitute for coffee during the war.
Interesting. In Finland, people substituted coffee with chicory roots.
Another fantastic, informative episode! Well done! BTW, I find it especially fitting to this episode that your theme song is 'Highway Wildflowers" by Bird Creek! Cheers!
Here in Slovenia Dandelion Salad is a national dish in Springtime.
Nick Joel My Italian father made this for me as s child!
More like this, please. Foraging is such an important part of our history.... and if I might add it's a great way ro get a good dose of reality in such an odd modern society
Also excellent source of nutrition.
It's actually really really not, for a few reasons.
1. Basically nobody has access to anything even approximating a natural environment to forage from.
2. Basically nobody has anywhere near the knowledge people who forage to survive would have.
3. It's a very plausible health risk due to ignorantly consuming dangerous plants, or because the environment is far more polluted with hard-to-discern toxins, like heavy metals, pesticides, etc.
@@seigeengine Point 1 is completely false for ME. 2 is true but correctable and it's not about living off the land entirely it's about incremental diet supplementation.
3 is laughable, my yard is vastly cleaner, healthier than 90% of American commercial farming, I use essentially zero pesticides and rare exceptions are organic. Wild untrodden lands all around.
Surely you are aware of some of the nasty persistent toxins used in modern agriculture, grain silos are fumigated with stuff you don't even want to think about. I hope you buy nothing but organic and never eat out.
Americans are extremely unhealthy due to sugar, grain oils, over processed foods, etc., certainly not from foraging their food which would also cure the rampant sedentary problem.
@@Mrbfgray Nobody asked you to confess what a massive wanker you are.
Absolutely loved your video. To me they are beautiful flowers. Love to see them on my lawn along with the many other wild flowers. This year they bought in many types of bees and insects. Thanks again.
Dandelions have always been one of my favorite flowers. They're always around, bright little flowers that show up every spring, signaling the better weather to come.
We've made dandelion wine multiple times from the plants in our untreated rural yard. It's somewhat labor intensive, because it's best it you remove all of the green parts, but it's very tasty. We've also used the leaves in salads.
The most interesting thing for me is that, as a teenager and young adult, I used to have a green iguana. I had to treat her greens with vitamin powder to make sure she was healthy... unless it was summer dandelions. They are so packed with nutrients that she didn't need the vitamins in the summer!
That’s interesting I never heard that before.
@@wrench8149 Yeah, the entire plant is edible. You can clean and roast the roots for tea, the green parts make excellent salad-I used to have a pet iguana, and if she ate plenty of dandelion greens, she didn't need as much of the vitamin powder on her other food, they are very nutritious- and the flowers can be used for salads or wine. Oh, and the plants aerate the soil, too, so they really aren't so bad.
It took me 5 hours of plucking to get all the green off my dandelion heads when I made dandelion wine. But it was eventually worth the labor.
@@skwoods7986 Yeah, that part is difficult. We keep missing the first flowers, haven't made it in a few years now. Try using champagne yeast, it works nicely with the flavors and produces a high enough alcohol content to keep it from going off or needing to be refrigerated after bottling.
My childhood rabbit used to love to eat the Dandelions
In the 'War Against Dandelions' there can be only one winner....and it ain't 'us'...
I have no idea why but for some reason dandelions on the Aleutian chain of islands grow to be enormous. The flowers themselves are not that much larger than those of dandelions elsewhere but the plants are huge. Foot long leaves in clumps a foot across. The climate in the Aleutians is hella cold in winter and not much warmer in the brief summer. Perpetually cold and damp. Spring is glorious though: the islands are a sea of wildflowers.
The word for dandelions in German, by the way, is Löwenzahn, literally 'lion's tooth'.
Using herbicides on Dandelions may be linked to Bee Hive collapse as they are one of the first plants to flower in the spring and attract the Bees.
The roots when cleaned, chopped and toasted can be crushed into a powder and steeped in hot water and makes a very good coffee.
I love dandelions. They grow amongst the natural bluebells in my lawn. The bright yellow with the deep blue is truly beautiful!
That sounds wonderful. I would love to add bluebells to my meadow garden! I have the dandelions already.
When I mow the lawn, I leave little "islands" of dandelion and buttercup in the yard. My neighbors didn't like it too much until I told them that it's for my daughters' and toddler son's enjoyment; to pick them, to play in them, to blow the seeds when it's time. Secretly though, it's also for me.
The definition of "weed" is just any plant growing where you don't want it to grow. If you don't see something as a weed, it's not. I like that idea.
Anyway, thanks for sharing another wonderful, thorough, fascinating piece of history. Cheers.
This was a fantastic video. Thanks for sharing!
Dandelions are magnificent! Bees love them :)
and bees give us honey as a sweetener and for mead and wax for candles.
Dave Parrott Not to mention bees pollinate a lot of our favorite foods! 🐝
@@daveparrott9530 I love bees. I do my best not to kill them and save them when I see them in trouble. Maybe I'm just a cooc.
In the past few years I've rarely seen dandelions, and I've hardly seen any bees..
Bees do not visit those flowers. They are asexual, not needing bees to reproduce. Besides, bees are almost extinct anyways.
I literally just delivered some cooked dandelion greens to my elderly aunt at her request. Great timing on this video!