DANDELION (Taraxacum officinale), a perennial herb be longing to the family Compositae (q.v.). The plant has a wide range, being found in Europe, Central Asia, North America, and the Arctic regions, and also in the south temperate zone. The leaves form a spreading rosette on the very short stem ; they are smooth, of a bright shining green, sessile and tapering downwards. The name dandelion is derived from the French dent-de-lion, an appellation given on account of the tooth-like lobes of the leaves. The long tap-root has a simple or many-headed rhizome ; it is black externally, and is very difficult of extirpation. The flower stalks are smooth, brittle, leafless, hollow and very numerous. The flowers bloom from April till August, and remain open from five or six in the morning to eight or nine at night. The flower heads are golden yellow, and reach I Z to 2 in. in width; the florets are all strap-shaped. The fruits are olive or dull yellow in colour, and are each surmounted by a long beak, on which rests a pappus of delicate white hairs, which occasions the ready dispersal of the fruit by the wind ; each fruit contains one seed. The globes formed by the plumed fruits are nearly two inches in diameter. The in volucre consists of an outer spreading (or reflexed) and an inner and erect sow of bracts. In all parts of the plant a milky juice is present. The root externally is brown and wrinkled, internally white, with a yellow centre and concentric paler rings. It is two inches to a foot long, and about a quarter to half an inch in diameter. The leaves are bitter, but are sometimes eaten as a salad; they serve as food for silkworms when mulberry leaves are not to be had. The root is roasted as a substitute for coffee. Several varieties of the dandelion are recognized by botanists; they differ in the degree and mode of cutting of the leaf-margin and the erect or spreading character of the outer series of bracts.
T. paludosum, the marsh dandelion, affects boggy situations, and flowers in late summer and autumn; it has nearly entire leaves, and the outer bracts of its involucre are erect.
The red-seeded dandelion (T. laevigatum), a native of Europe, very similar to the common species but smaller with red, shorter beaked fruits and more deeply and finely cut leaves, is now widely naturalized in the UnitedStates and Canada.