IT'S ALL IN YOUR POINT OF VIEW
by Daniel Suits

A leisurely walk with my dog in the spring weather the other day got me thinking about dandelions. As I suppose most people know, the English name of the plant comes from the serration of its leaves, and derives from the French dent de lion, “lion's tooth.” Interestingly enough, however, the French, themselves, don't use that name. In France, the name derives from an entirely different characteristic of the plant. Dandelions, when consumed, have a reputation as a mild diuretic, and the only word for the plant you will find in a French dictionary is pisenlit, a term composed of words that taken individually are, perhaps, best left untranslated.

Daniel Suits 2005

The dandelion blossom is one of the loveliest flowers I know. Years ago when I was teaching in Japan, one of my Japanese colleagues, just returned from his first visit to the United States, remarked on how lovely some of the American lawns were, dotted all over with beautiful yellow blossoms.

As it is, of course, dandelions are generally classified as “weeds.” But according to the dictionary definition, a weed is “a herbaceous plant, not valued for use or beauty, growing wild and rank, and regarded as encumbering the ground.” Under this definition, how can the dandelion be called a weed? Not only is the blossom manifestly beautiful, but the dandelion is also a remarkably useful plant. The leaves make fine greens. When I was a kid, we often ate them during the summer, and I still enjoy a mess of dandelions from time to time.

(I particularly recommend boiled dandelions with veal tongue. It's tasty and easy to prepare - except when you have to collect the dandelions. My mother solved that problem by sending the kids out to do the work, but these days I wait until commercially grown dandelions come into the store. If dandelions are unavailable, I use Swiss chard instead, and it's almost as good. To fix the dish, just boil the greens with the veal tongue in plenty of water for about an hour and a half. Remove and skin the tongue, dress the greens with a little salt, vinegar, and olive oil, and serve them together. Delicious!)

In addition to its use as greens, the dandelion blossoms can be gathered to make dandelion wine, and the roots - the plant is closely related to chicory - can be roasted to yield a caffeine-free coffee-like beverage.
Nevertheless, dandelions are classified as weeds. The catch is that the definition doesn't say that a weed has neither use nor beauty. Rather, it stipulates that the plant is “not valued” for its use or beautify. And, I regret to say this is the case with most people. So far from prizing the plant, many people go to great effort to eliminate it from their lawns. In earlier days, only people rich enough to afford regular gardeners or grounds keepers could boast of dandelion-free lawns. These days, of course, there are plenty of lawn-care firms ready and eager, for a price, to take care of the problem with commercial sprays.

But why is it that the use and beauty of this fine plant is “not valued?” Why does our esthetic sense perceive a pure green lawn as somehow lovelier than one dotted with beautiful little yellow flowers? About a hundred years ago, the American economist Thorstein Veblen propounded an idea in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. If I remember correctly, his notion was that in a competitive market society like ours, we tend to assign the greatest esthetic value to things that best display our personal wealth. According to this theory, if dandelion cultivation required great expenditure by the grower on specialized equipment and knowledgeable gardeners, the flower would be highly prized.

There would be international dandelion associations, and members would expend much energy and capital in their competition for the finest display.
But since they grow lushly without human effort, they are scorned. A yard full of dandelions broadcasts to the world at large that the householder expends nothing on his lawn. Aha! He is marked as poor and unsuccessful in our competitive society. On the other hand, a pure green, dandelion-free lawn announces that the householder is rich enough to get rid of the weeds. A winner in the economic contest!