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Yahoo My WebGet your teeth into dandelions
Our word of the week celebrates the coming of spring (here in Australia). Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, is a ubiquitous weed that originates from Europe and Asia. It is used to make many herbal remedies for a number of purposes from stimulating digestion to cleansing the liver. How did it get its name?
The genus name is thought to derive from the Arabic tarakhshaqun from the Persian, tark hashgun, or wild endive. Another derivation may be that it comes from the Greek taraxis meaning confusion and akos which means remedy, ie referring to the medicinal use of the plant to remedy confusion.
The species name, officina, from Medieval Latin originally meant storeroom but had evolved to mean a specialized herb store.
But how did the plant get to be called a dandelion? Dandelion is a Middle English word borrowed from the Old French, dentdelion. And this, of course, is the clue, the word refers to the shape of the leaves which are strongly serrated and resemble lion’s teeth. The plant’s original genus name, given by Linnaeus, was Leontodon, with the similar meaning of lion teeth.
In modern French the plant is named pissenlit, which means rather crudely “urinate in bed”, referring to the dandelion’s diuretic properties (pissabeds is an English folkname as is piscialletto in Italian). So we are probably better off calling it a dandelion.