Get your teeth into dandelions
Our word of the week celebrates the first day 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 to stimulate digestion and to cleanse the liver. How did it get its name?
The genus name may derive from the Arabic tarakhshaqun from the Persian, tark hashgun, or wild endive. Another explanation is 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 come to mean a specialized herb store.
But how did it get to be called a dandelion? Dandelion is a Middle English borrow word from the Old French, dentdelion. And this, of course, is the clue:Â it refers to the shape of the leaves which are strongly indented resembling lion’s teeth. The plant’s original genus name, given by Linnaeus, was Leontodon, similarly meaning lion teeth.
In modern French the plant is named pissenlit, which means “urinate in bed”, referring to its diuretic properties (”pissabeds” is an English folkname as is piscialletto in Italian).
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