Common Dandelion
Taraxacum officinale
A low rosette perennial with deeply toothed leaves whose lobes point back towards the base, and a single golden flowerhead of strap-shaped florets carried on a hollow, leafless stem that bleeds white latex when snapped. The young leaves are eaten as a bitter salad or cooked green, the flowers go into syrups and wine, and the fleshy taproot is roasted as a coffee substitute. Taraxacum officinale is an aggregate of hundreds of near-identical microspecies; the group behaves as one plant in the kitchen.
Open, disturbed and trampled ground of every sort — lawns, verges, waste ground, pasture, pavement cracks and dune grassland — on most soils throughout Britain and Ireland, from the coast up onto hill ground. Earliest flowering on warm, south-facing banks.
Not known to be toxic, though the milky latex can irritate sensitive skin and quantities of leaf are markedly diuretic. When gathering rosettes from grassland, note that common ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris) leaves are softly downy and break without milky sap, and are liver-toxic. Avoid roadsides and dog-walked verges.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Flowerhead
One head per stem, made up entirely of yellow strap-shaped ray florets with no central disc. Nothing else in a lawn combines a solitary head with a completely leafless stalk.
Stem
Hollow, unbranched, leafless and slightly succulent. Cat's-ear and hawkbits, the commonest lookalikes in short turf, have solid wiry stems bearing tiny scale-like bracts and often more than one head.
Leaves
All basal, hairless, with triangular lobes angled back towards the root, and a pale midrib often flushed pink at the base. Hairy leaves mean something else.
Seedhead
A near-perfect white globe of parachuted seeds on a lengthened stalk, which is the surest identification at a distance once flowering is over.
Milky sap
Break any leaf, stem or root and white latex flows within a second or two. A dry break rules the plant out, whatever the flower looked like.
Updated 2026-08-09T21:34:15.897Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Herb