Speaker 1: Unless you like to puff the little seeds off of
Speaker 1: dandelion heads, you probably don't think very highly of dandelions.
Speaker 1: There are weeds, after all, but what is a weed
Speaker 1: other than an unloved plant? You know, you might have
Speaker 1: a different opinion of these teeth of the lions after
Speaker 1: hearing this episode, and come to think of it, I
Speaker 1: feel like we're really laying a bridge of understanding between
Speaker 1: humans and our garden pest with this playlist, so gratifying cool.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 1: Puffball Chuck, and there's Blowball Jerry, and I like to
Speaker 1: call me Month's head. And this is stuff you should do.
Speaker 1: Did you get those references?
Speaker 3: Uh? Sure?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well we should probably explain them to everybody else
Speaker 1: because they probably think it's an in joke. But it's
Speaker 1: not at all. Number one, because we're about to share
Speaker 1: it with you. Number two, it's not really a joke.
Speaker 1: And number three, those are alternate names for dandelions.
Speaker 4: That's right, And we're going to be exalting the dandelion
Speaker 4: probably say a lot of times how great we think
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry if you hate dandelions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how it's unfairly maligned. And we want to thank
Speaker 4: Sarah Andrews from Idaho because Sarah is a listener who's
Speaker 4: senting this in.
Speaker 1: Nice, very nice. Thanks a lot, Sarah. Every time I
Speaker 1: hear Idaho, I'm reminded of that silly T shirt that
Speaker 1: said Idaho Daho. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3: I never saw that one.
Speaker 1: What was that one? There was a company called like
Speaker 1: Dangerous T Shirts or something like that, and they had, like, man,
Speaker 1: they were killing it with the crazy T shirts for
Speaker 1: a while in like the early two thousands.
Speaker 4: Was that like instead of Saint coch let's say, you know,
Speaker 4: poke or cocaine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of sometimes more original than that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they were coveted for a little bit among people who
Speaker 1: liked incubus and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I couldn't name an incu of a song, so that's
Speaker 3: not me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get back to dandelions. I don't know
Speaker 1: how we ever get off track. It's kind of strange,
Speaker 1: but it happens from time to time, and it just happened, chuck.
Speaker 1: So let's stop it from happening right now.
Speaker 4: Right because dandelions, as you will see, have had a long,
Speaker 4: rich history that we're going to talk about in depth
Speaker 4: as a medicinal plant, as an edible plant, as a
Speaker 4: wonderful pollinator, and it was recast as a villains, as
Speaker 4: a weed to get rid of. But you need only
Speaker 4: look at the history of the dandelion, the fact that
Speaker 4: it was brought to North America by colonists to kind
Speaker 4: of underscore the fact that we wanted the dandelion here.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's important to say that they brought it
Speaker 1: here on purpose. I saw somebody point out like this,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it didn't hit your ride. It was like
Speaker 1: purposely brought here. And the idea that dandelions suck is
Speaker 1: a really recent development, especially compared to how long people
Speaker 1: valued and prized dandelions. I just find that fascinating.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 4: This thing is about thirty million years old, native and
Speaker 4: sort of Atlantic Europe all the way to Siberia and
Speaker 4: in the northern Hemisphere. You're gonna know a dandelion because
Speaker 4: between March and October you're going to see these beautiful
Speaker 4: yellow flowers. You'll see some what's called a rosette, which
Speaker 4: are these very short level ground stems that grow in
Speaker 4: a circular pattern, and then these little slender, green, hollow stalks,
Speaker 4: you know, two to twenty inches, but usually at least
Speaker 4: around here the dandelions are i don't know, like eight inches.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems about right. That's my experience as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the other really impressive things about the
Speaker 1: dandelion is if you look really closely at the flower,
Speaker 1: each individual pedal has a little what becomes the part
Speaker 1: of the puffball. When the flower seeds, it already is attached,
Speaker 1: and that thing is called the papas and at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the papist is the seed, and the papos
Speaker 1: itself is like this like parachute essentially that keeps the
Speaker 1: seed aloft. And research into I saw pepeye, but I
Speaker 1: like paposes as the plural.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love peppy.
Speaker 1: So it's found that they're actually phenomenal at keeping the
Speaker 1: seeds aloft. They create a kind of vortex that, until
Speaker 1: it was seen when they started testing pappy was thought
Speaker 1: to be impossible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that vortex not only makes it, you know, travel
Speaker 4: up and out and away in such a way that
Speaker 4: if it was shaped any differently, it wouldn't do that.
Speaker 4: But if that little thing lands on water, that same
Speaker 4: vortex is going to form a little air bubble around
Speaker 4: it and protect it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of my prize possessions is this dandelion puffball
Speaker 1: in caseed in resin, and it's like the real deal.
Speaker 1: And I've never understood how it worked, but it turns
Speaker 1: out that if you actually take a dandelion puffball and
Speaker 1: actually not just put water in it, but submerge it
Speaker 1: in water, the puffball does not It doesn't collapse. Isn't
Speaker 1: that nuts?
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I think so too. So that's just one of the
Speaker 1: many amazing things we're going to reveal today on stuff
Speaker 1: you should know?
Speaker 3: Did I wander into the wrong show?
Speaker 1: Well, we should tell everybody it's ten am, and we
Speaker 1: usually refer one. So I'm a much different person at
Speaker 1: ten am.
Speaker 4: You're a news anchor, apparently, So I mentioned yellow. They're
Speaker 4: not always yellow. They can be orange, they can be white,
Speaker 4: they can be kind of purply peach. They open in
Speaker 4: the morning and close in the evening, which has given
Speaker 4: them the name the Shepherd's Clock, and they do that
Speaker 4: to preserve pollen and keep that pollen safe for the
Speaker 4: next day, which also makes it and this is one
Speaker 4: of my favorite words at photo nasty.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a great word.
Speaker 4: Yeah, plants open and close with the setting and rising
Speaker 4: of the sun. Yeah, felt photo nasty.
Speaker 1: I saw like a time lapse. I actually was in
Speaker 1: a video. It's just a series of photos of the
Speaker 1: dandelion flower opening and closing over the course of the day.
Speaker 1: I found I ran across a word from researching this
Speaker 1: that I'd never heard before that I absolutely love dandelion,
Speaker 1: Like you said, are edible. They're used in cooking their
Speaker 1: culinary plant, which makes them a potter herb. One word,
Speaker 1: a potterb. Isn't that awesome? What a great homey little
Speaker 1: like I just imagine, you know, hobbits using that word.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hobbits. And my wife, Oh does.
Speaker 1: She call it potterbs? You've heard that before?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, she's I mean that's older. We're talking
Speaker 4: about dandelions today, and she was just like, oh, are
Speaker 4: you going to talk about this?
Speaker 3: This, this, this, this, this all right?
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, the famous potter.
Speaker 3: It's also another kind of clock, you know.
Speaker 4: I already mentioned the shepherd's clock because of opening and
Speaker 4: closing it at the sunrise and sunset. But those little
Speaker 4: seed heads. They're called dandelion clocks, and that is from
Speaker 4: the old uh you know, you make a wish when
Speaker 4: you blow the dandelion and you scatter those seeds as
Speaker 4: sort of a long rich childhood tradition. But apparently the
Speaker 4: number of puffs it takes to empty that thing is
Speaker 4: what time it is, so it can I haven't tested
Speaker 4: this out. I don't know this is rock solid signs, but.
Speaker 1: That's a sort of a thing that's pretty neat.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one other thing about those paposes and the seeds
Speaker 1: that are attached to them, there's a longstanding, I guess,
Speaker 1: kind of urban legend or maybe rural legend that they
Speaker 1: can travel up to one hundred kilometers sixty two miles,
Speaker 1: and that does not seem to be the case, even
Speaker 1: though you'll see that stat absolutely everywhere, including some legitimate places.
Speaker 1: But Kyle helped us with this, our British buddy, and
Speaker 1: he found that a two thousand and three study, which
Speaker 1: is the most recent you can find on this, is
Speaker 1: that just one in seven thousand papases travels more than
Speaker 1: one kilometer. So just leave one hundred kilometers out of
Speaker 1: the whole equation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And Kyle told us that because he's from England.
Speaker 4: But for our North American listeners, we're talking three hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty something feet if it's one hundred kilometers in
Speaker 4: about three and a half feet for a meter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently ninety nine and a half percent of
Speaker 1: all papists land just within thirty feet of the parent plant,
Speaker 1: which is also ten meters. So yes, if you ever
Speaker 1: hear that a papist contain travel one hundred kilometers, you
Speaker 1: can be like, that's wrong. What you just said is wrong.
Speaker 4: I think like one did, and they framed that. Maybe
Speaker 4: that's the one you have in amber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that first dollar bill you make as
Speaker 1: a business, you put it into amber.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's also a cool adaptation where after they flower, that
Speaker 4: little hollow stalk that the flower sits upon goes limp
Speaker 4: on the ground and is just sort of hiding there
Speaker 4: away from birds and stuff, And when they ripen up,
Speaker 4: they jump back up again and they're like, here we are.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. I think so too. Do you want
Speaker 1: to take a break and come back and talk about
Speaker 1: where they got their name? Let's do it, so, Chuck Dandelion.
Speaker 1: I've never stopped and considered why it was called that,
Speaker 1: But it turns out that whole that lion at the
Speaker 1: end is actually a giveaway for where the name came from.
Speaker 1: It's French for lion's tooth, dent de leon pretty neat.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: The reason they call it that is it's a reference
Speaker 1: to the deeply serrated jagged leaves. I guess somebody was like,
Speaker 1: that looks like a lion's tooth, and they lived in France,
Speaker 1: and that's where they got the name dandelion.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's also if you look at the botanical name,
Speaker 4: it really gives a good indication of what it was
Speaker 4: being used for back then. The genus name is Taraxicum,
Speaker 4: and there are a couple of explanations here. I kind
Speaker 4: of like the second one. The first one is a
Speaker 4: Greek word for disorder, which is a taxia, but it's
Speaker 4: also could have come from Arabic for bitter herb, which
Speaker 4: is terraq chagogue. And then when you combine bitter herb
Speaker 4: with the species name, which is how'd you say that,
Speaker 4: I don't know? Aficionelle. That is a word for monastery
Speaker 4: store room. So a bitter herb in a monastery storeroom
Speaker 4: basically is telling you, hey, we use this plant in
Speaker 4: a very productive way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The whole disorder thing is totally insensible if you
Speaker 1: ask me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: So one of the other great things so humans use
Speaker 1: dandelions is we'll see in a lot of different ways
Speaker 1: and have for a very long time. But our animal
Speaker 1: friends love dandelions too. Those flowers, even though they look
Speaker 1: kind of flimsy if you think about it, they're rich
Speaker 1: in nectar packed with it. So bees, butterflies, basically any
Speaker 1: kind of pollinators love dandelions. Like you said, the reason
Speaker 1: the stalk falls to the ground after flowering and as
Speaker 1: the seedheads are developing, that's because birds love the little
Speaker 1: dandelion seeds. And one of the other things that's important
Speaker 1: about them too is they they basically flower and seed
Speaker 1: almost around the like the whole year, depending on where
Speaker 1: you live. So at times where there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of food sources for birds and pollinators, the dandelions there
Speaker 1: to kind of keep them going through the same you know,
Speaker 1: late fall.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think it's one of the first guys
Speaker 4: to get going in the spring.
Speaker 3: Too, right, I believe.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we're going to get more in detail about
Speaker 4: you know, how it's been eaten. But well, actually, let's
Speaker 4: let's save all that. Let's just let's just tease it
Speaker 4: then and say it has long been eaten, is now
Speaker 4: being eaten again due to the sort of foraging movement
Speaker 4: happening in the culinary world.
Speaker 1: It's a great time.
Speaker 4: I think that kind of kicked off in COVID when
Speaker 4: people are like, well, it can't go to the store.
Speaker 3: What can I eat that's in my backyard.
Speaker 1: I'll try dandelions. I've always wondered what it tastes like.
Speaker 2: Bitter?
Speaker 1: So yeah, nice. So I think we said probably a
Speaker 1: couple of times that people have been using dandelions for
Speaker 1: all sorts of reasons, not just as potterbs, for a
Speaker 1: long time. One of the earlier mentions we can find
Speaker 1: was in the Arabic world. A couple of physicians named
Speaker 1: Rozi's and Avicenna both wrote about some of the properties
Speaker 1: of dandelions and dandelion roots back in the tenth and
Speaker 1: eleventh centuries, and most of what they were talking about
Speaker 1: was its use as a diuretic and medicinally speaking, that's
Speaker 1: probably the most famous property that dandelions have, as they
Speaker 1: make you pee. And in fact, there's a couple of
Speaker 1: names that refer to that, depending on where you are.
Speaker 1: For dandelions, that were to the fact that they make
Speaker 1: you pee, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: In France they're called the apparently more than they're called
Speaker 4: the dentte leone, they're called the pisson lit, which means
Speaker 4: you know, pepe in the night, and a folk name
Speaker 4: in England.
Speaker 3: Is a pissipad for the same reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, apparently it's it's all the potassium
Speaker 4: in there that's going to stimulate your nation. And you know,
Speaker 4: because of that, diuretics are used for a lot of things,
Speaker 4: and you know, medicinally now and historically, if you want
Speaker 4: to work something through your system and pee it out,
Speaker 4: dandelions is a good way to make that happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and very famously in the American Midwest they're called
Speaker 1: peepee weeds. Oh that's that's totally made up.
Speaker 3: I should say, Oh, that's not true either.
Speaker 1: No, I just made it up.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: I got you. I got you back for the what
Speaker 1: was the lateral gene transfer gospel group that you got
Speaker 1: me with?
Speaker 3: Oh geez, I don't even remember now it was that.
Speaker 3: But I've only gotten you once.
Speaker 4: The score is Josh three thousand one. Oh man, there
Speaker 4: was a sixteenth century book too. What was the name
Speaker 4: of that one?
Speaker 1: People call it Garden of Health because the full title
Speaker 1: of it is containing the sundry, rare and hidden virtues
Speaker 1: of all kinds of simples and plants, together with the
Speaker 1: manner of how they are used and applied in medicine
Speaker 1: for the health of man's body against diverse diseases and
Speaker 1: infirmities most common against men, gathered by the long experience
Speaker 1: and industry of William Langham, practitioner of physic That's the
Speaker 1: actual title of that book, which is why there's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just going to call it Garden of Health.
Speaker 4: I mean, Garden of Health really says what that says.
Speaker 1: I know, he didn't need all that extra stuff. That's
Speaker 1: like the introduction. I think he put the introduction in
Speaker 1: the title.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a little did it say? The end?
Speaker 1: At the end pretty much.
Speaker 4: This is from, like I said, the sixteenth century, and
Speaker 4: it talked a lot about, you know, all the kinds
Speaker 4: of things they thought it could help back then, toothache,
Speaker 4: fever's depression, even baldness. But they also talked about growing
Speaker 4: it alongside other vegetables. And herbs in the garden, and
Speaker 4: you duck up this kind of cool fact. It's ethylene
Speaker 4: gas that they released. So if you actually grow dandelions
Speaker 4: or have dandelions growing near fruiting plants like tomatoes, they're
Speaker 4: going to ripen faster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that neat super cool. Yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: cover a lot of actually pretty cool little benefits I
Speaker 1: guess that they provide. But let's keep going with the
Speaker 1: tradition of using them medicinally, shall we. Sure there's a
Speaker 1: guy named John Girard who wrote a book in the
Speaker 1: sixteen thirties and he's like, hey, I want to contribute
Speaker 1: to this too. I've found that dandelion strengthens the weak stomach,
Speaker 1: and which is important because actually, if you use the
Speaker 1: roots of a dandelion, it contains a lot of inulin,
Speaker 1: which is an important prebiotic for gut health. So John
Speaker 1: Girard wasn't just whistling dixie.
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 4: It turns out they have more vitamin A than spinach,
Speaker 4: more vitamin C than tomatoes. They've got a ton we
Speaker 4: already mentioned potassium, but also a lot of calcium, a
Speaker 4: lot of iron, and then a lot of words that
Speaker 4: I can barely pronounce that you found that it's packed
Speaker 4: with starting with flavonoids, that's the only one I had
Speaker 4: heard of.
Speaker 1: Has triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, phenolic acid, sterols, and cumerants, and they
Speaker 1: bestow things like antibacterial, antioxidant, anti inflammatory, hepadoprotective, and anti
Speaker 1: tumor properties. And you dug up a lot of ways
Speaker 1: that they actually help health.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So, I mean we can talk all day
Speaker 4: about like the ways that people thought it would help
Speaker 4: you back in the sixteenth century, but people might poo
Speaker 4: poo something like that, But there have been modern studies.
Speaker 4: I'll just give you a few examples. There was a
Speaker 4: study from twenty fifteen in Canada that reported that dandelion
Speaker 4: extract can block ultraviolet UVB radiations crazy when applied to
Speaker 4: the skin, it can also irritate the skin. So don't
Speaker 4: necessarily just like take dandelions and like start rubbing them
Speaker 4: all over yourself at the pool. There was a twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen review of studies from a university in Denmark that
Speaker 4: suggests that dandelion extracts actually stimulates pancreatic cells to produce insulin,
Speaker 4: so it could potentially help control blood sugar, right, and what.
Speaker 3: About there was one on the liver too, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said it was Hepato protective, which means it
Speaker 1: helps the liver. And actually it goes in and like
Speaker 1: just kicks butt in your liver. It slows the progression
Speaker 1: of fibrosis, which is scarring of the liver, and the
Speaker 1: extract actually inactivates the cells that cause fibrosis in the
Speaker 1: liver and essentially your liver, as everybody knows, it can
Speaker 1: regenerate itself. Once the dandelion extract has gone in and
Speaker 1: stopped the fibrosis, the liver can heal. So it's incredibly
Speaker 1: helpful with protecting the liver from damage. I mean, that's nuts.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it was designed to do that for
Speaker 1: the liver. It's that effective.
Speaker 4: I do want to mention the cancer one because Emily
Speaker 4: had a very funny, very Emily line. There was a
Speaker 4: twenty twenty man, why do I do that lately? Twelve?
Speaker 3: I did that. I did that a lot. Yeah, what
Speaker 3: is happening?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's a study from the University of Windsor in Canada
Speaker 4: about dandelion root extract can induce apoptosis, which is cell death.
Speaker 4: And pancreatic and prostate cancer and test tube and their
Speaker 4: cells in the test tubes potentially preventing their spread. So
Speaker 4: this is something Emily new and this morning she was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's so like modern American at the very least, to
Speaker 4: take something that could actually help fight cancer and sprayue
Speaker 4: chemicals on it to kill it it cause cancer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she stormed out of the room.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we have to learn the hard way, but it
Speaker 1: is reassuring that things seem to be coming full circle,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like people are getting a little more
Speaker 4: eyes open to stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're getting on board the dandelion train. So one
Speaker 1: thing about those studies that you said, like, they're essentially
Speaker 1: confirming to our modern tastes what the Chinese knew all
Speaker 1: the way back in six point fifty nine CE, people
Speaker 1: like Nicholas Culpepper knew in the eighteenth century. All these
Speaker 1: people wrote about this stuff and just how effective it was.
Speaker 1: And then now science is going in and saying these
Speaker 1: people were right, and here's how it is effective. I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty cool. And in part because of that,
Speaker 1: the dandelion is being rehabilitated. But first I think we
Speaker 1: need to mention you said that it came by North America.
Speaker 1: I piped up on purpose, I think more than once,
Speaker 1: even I was so excited about that. And it's possible
Speaker 1: it was actually on the Mayflower. It arrived that early.
Speaker 1: And they think that because of plant migration, as we
Speaker 1: talked about before, the dandelion may have spread ahead of
Speaker 1: Europeans as they entered further and further into the North
Speaker 1: American continent, and so Native Americans that they encountered may
Speaker 1: have already been using dandelions in some of their medicines.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, absolutely. They were drinking it in tonics. They
Speaker 4: were boiling it with fatty meats, which it sounds disgusting.
Speaker 1: It does it really, unless you're talking about something like
Speaker 1: collards with like hamhocks or something that sounds okay. But
Speaker 1: in this case, I imagine a pot of boiling water with
Speaker 1: a skin of fat just bubbling at the top and
Speaker 1: some dandelion leaves floating around in it.
Speaker 4: And we'll talk about you know, more ways you can
Speaker 4: eat it, but it's long been used in like cordials
Speaker 4: and beers, like the dandelion root. You can you know,
Speaker 4: grind it up and use it as like a coffee substitute,
Speaker 4: kind of like chicory. So you know, people were using
Speaker 4: it for metal, they were using it for old kinds
Speaker 4: of folk remedies and foods and things, largely because again
Speaker 4: it was everywhere. It grows in not very good soil.
Speaker 4: They can it's considered a perennial because they can live
Speaker 4: well because like you said, they're kind of growing year round,
Speaker 4: but they can live for more.
Speaker 3: Than ten years, and they don't mess with them and
Speaker 3: kill them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty cool too. One of
Speaker 1: the other things I saw, there's a book called The
Speaker 1: Economical Housewife from the eighteen fifties that it might be
Speaker 1: the first recipe for dandelion wine, and people still make
Speaker 1: that today, and it's actually super easy. You just take
Speaker 1: some dandelion flours, some water. Eventually you had some sugar
Speaker 1: and some lemon, let it sit for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: strain it out, and then let it sit for another
Speaker 1: week in age, and you've got yourself some dandelion wine.
Speaker 1: And it sounds deliciously easy or maybe easily delicious, one
Speaker 1: of the two, but I'd love to try. Have you
Speaker 1: ever had dandelion wine or dandelion beer or anything like that.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. I mean, it's definitely a thing.
Speaker 4: Ray Bradbury had a novel called Dandelion Wine from nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty seven, so it's something that's been enjoyed all over
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: In France they use it.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they'll take the leaves and blanch them and spread
Speaker 4: them with bread and butter. Like it sounds like if
Speaker 4: there's not a Brooklyn restaurant serving dandelion toast at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what is happening in our life?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It sounds like fairy toast like the
Speaker 1: Australians love, but with dandelion leaves instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's also, you know, just a salad, a salad green component,
Speaker 4: and like we said, it is very bitter, but it's
Speaker 4: using all kinds of salad. Sometimes it's the only kind
Speaker 4: of leaf using a salad. Sometimes it can be mixed
Speaker 4: in with other things. But in France they have one
Speaker 4: called the salad de pisson lits from that original name,
Speaker 4: that's got bacon in it and dandelion leaves.
Speaker 3: It just you know, sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Apparently that was a common dish during the depression
Speaker 1: in America. Too, because it was just cheap, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it sounds delicious too. I say, we take a
Speaker 1: break and we come back and talk about another surprising
Speaker 1: use of dandelion that I hadn't heard of until this,
Speaker 1: but you probably did because of Emily.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: I delighted her with that fact as well, So we'll
Speaker 4: be right back, all right. So Josh said that he
Speaker 4: hadn't heard of this cool fact. I hadn't heard of it.
Speaker 4: Emily hadn't heard of it, and I think it may
Speaker 4: be the fact of the podcast. But dandelions are a
Speaker 4: source of natural rubber.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, I would I would take issue with that.
Speaker 1: I think it has to do with the vortices over
Speaker 1: the pappy or the fact that they're potterbs. All right,
Speaker 1: this one's good. It's up there. Maybe they're all tied
Speaker 1: for first. I don't know, but hey.
Speaker 4: That means we've got a good topic if there are several,
Speaker 4: right competitors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so not just any dandelion produces rubber or
Speaker 1: latex that can be turned into rubber. A specific type
Speaker 1: of dandelion they figured out the Kazakh dandelion, which is
Speaker 1: native to the Eurasian steps. How'd you like that it's
Speaker 1: also called the Russian dandelion here in the United States.
Speaker 1: That specific one puts out enough latex that it gave
Speaker 1: rubber trees a run for their money. During World War Two,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about many times, America and Britain were like,
Speaker 1: we need more rubber for the war effort in the
Speaker 1: Japanese control. Essentially all of the rubbers apply at war
Speaker 1: with the Japanese, so we better come up with something
Speaker 1: else quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So they literally started screening like thousands and thousands of plants,
Speaker 4: and then I guess they're like, hey, if the rubber
Speaker 4: tree can grow rubber, there's got to be something else
Speaker 4: out there. The Soviets are the ones who said, try
Speaker 4: this Kazakh dandelion, and because of shortages during the wars,
Speaker 4: they said, here, here's a bunch of seeds, and they
Speaker 4: send a bunch of those Kazakh seeds the Soviet allies
Speaker 4: at the time in the nineteen forties, and ultimately we
Speaker 4: use some of it. Russians, Americans, and Germans did produce
Speaker 4: rubber from dandelions. It's very hearty. It can be susceptible
Speaker 4: to disease, though, depending what kind of disease but also
Speaker 4: grows everywhere and serves as a pollinator and it doesn't
Speaker 4: deforce things. So the big problem though, and I nowhere
Speaker 4: m's like, oh my god, is this the miracle we've
Speaker 4: all been hoping for with rubber. It just doesn't yield
Speaker 4: much as the Russian said it did, and so it's
Speaker 4: not economically viable as long as the real rubber tree
Speaker 4: is around.
Speaker 1: They released some paper that overstated how much rubber it
Speaker 1: can be gotten from the dandelion because they wanted to
Speaker 1: sound like big shots.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the reason why we didn't just keep going with
Speaker 1: dandelion rubber research in trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: increase yields is because in the meantime, people figured out
Speaker 1: we could make synthetic rubber from petroleum. It was almost
Speaker 1: as good as natural rubber, and it certainly was a
Speaker 1: good enough substitute, and we could just make batch after
Speaker 1: batch after batch rather than have to try to yield
Speaker 1: it from dandelion. So that fell to the wayside, and
Speaker 1: then by the time World War two ended, we had
Speaker 1: access to natural rubber supplies from the southeast Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: i should say, and so all that kind of put
Speaker 1: dandelion rubber on the back shelf. But in the what
Speaker 1: eighty almost a hundred years, jeez, since World War Two.
Speaker 1: I remember when that was like just like that was
Speaker 1: firmly like forty to fifty years in the past, and
Speaker 1: it just keeps getting further and further away. It's really awful.
Speaker 1: But we've kind of figured out in the introim that
Speaker 1: synthetic rubber it's useful, but there's nothing that can match
Speaker 1: natural rubber for like grip, heat, dissipation, all sorts of
Speaker 1: other properties. So we're starting to go back to look
Speaker 1: at sources for natural rubber, including ones that are more
Speaker 1: sustainable than the rubber trees, which require you basically DeForest
Speaker 1: and then plant the rubber trees to create a plantation
Speaker 1: with dandelions. You don't have to do that stuff.
Speaker 4: Now you got a big field, you can have dandelions,
Speaker 4: and like I said, it grows and it doesn't have.
Speaker 3: To be great soil.
Speaker 4: You can grow it hydroponically, without soil at all. You
Speaker 4: can grow it in the air, which is aeroponically. It's
Speaker 4: pretty amazing, and I think it's one of those things
Speaker 4: where like anytime you have a monoculture plant like that,
Speaker 4: like the rubber tree.
Speaker 3: It makes people a little bit nervous.
Speaker 4: Besides the deporestation, like have anything ever happened like some
Speaker 4: kind of weird blight, and the rubber trees were just,
Speaker 4: you know, not a candidate anymore. You got dandelions kind
Speaker 4: of waiting on deck with their bat right.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of surprising that it went from this
Speaker 1: really prized plant in so many ways to a hated weed,
Speaker 1: especially in Europe and the United States. And you hit
Speaker 1: upon why it became a hitted weed. You use the
Speaker 1: word monoculture, and the largest monoculture here in the United
Speaker 1: States are people's lawns. And for part of the esthetic
Speaker 1: of the lawn, you cannot have dandelions breaking up that perfect,
Speaker 1: unbroken sea of green grass. You got a dandelion popping up,
Speaker 1: the whole thing's ruined. Basically, that's the way people think
Speaker 1: of dandelions and lawns these days, or have since about
Speaker 1: the fifties.
Speaker 4: Essentially, that beautiful yellow flower, stop it right, dig it up.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's what happened.
Speaker 4: And we've gone over this before, but just sort of
Speaker 4: as a quick overview, this is the kind of thing
Speaker 4: that came over from England starting in the seventeenth century
Speaker 4: is when British aristocracy really started to get into these
Speaker 4: perfect sort of croquet croquet playing lawns, I guess is
Speaker 4: what you would call them. And then in America it
Speaker 4: was post World War Two when suburbanization really took hold.
Speaker 4: Lawnmowers really came into their own. Everyone was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: we've got these great new chemicals that'll kill everything except
Speaker 4: and make the grass grow really really well, and it's
Speaker 4: just modern and tidy and good looking, and that really
Speaker 4: kind of transformed the United States, you know, like, keep
Speaker 4: up that lawn, make a perfect green lawn if you
Speaker 4: want to keep your property value over everybody.
Speaker 1: Big one and Kyle also dug up another reason too
Speaker 1: that once the Cold War rolled around, conformity was equated
Speaker 1: with safety. So if you weren't keeping your lawn trim
Speaker 1: like everybody else, what's going on with you? You're making
Speaker 1: me feel a little bit nervous because you're not conforming.
Speaker 1: You must be a red spy hiding out in suburbia, basically, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really important kind of overlooked
Speaker 1: driver for things like perfectly manicured lawns and everybody having
Speaker 1: the same kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And speaking of driver, the other I don't think
Speaker 4: we've ever mentioned contributor to this nice was in the
Speaker 4: nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Golf started being televised.
Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty seven, you got golf on television for
Speaker 4: the first time, and people look at Augusta National and
Speaker 4: these golf courses that were beautifully manicured and aesthetically pleasing
Speaker 4: to the eye, and they're like, hey, I need to
Speaker 4: get some of that in my front yard. Maybe I
Speaker 4: can practice chipping some balls around in my front yard.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, if you're sitting there thinking like, Wow, I
Speaker 1: really love hearing these guys talk about grass, but I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear them have a dispute over it, you
Speaker 1: should go listen to How Our Grass Works episode. It's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty good way. It's a classic stuff you
Speaker 1: should know episode.
Speaker 3: It totally is.
Speaker 4: But anyway, all that preamble about you know, us poopa
Speaker 4: and lawns and why America did that brought us to this,
Speaker 4: which is weeds became enemy number one and dandelions were
Speaker 4: maybe even near the top of that list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why. For all the
Speaker 1: reasons that they're valuable, the pollinators and other kinds of plants,
Speaker 1: and that they can grow in marginal lands and basically
Speaker 1: everywhere is it makes them an enemy as a weed
Speaker 1: if you're trying to create a monoculture lawn, right. So,
Speaker 1: they can regenerate from like a one inch section of root,
Speaker 1: which means that if you cut a dandelion off at
Speaker 1: the even below ground level, it's like good, you know, good,
Speaker 1: try pal, but it just sprouts right back up. You
Speaker 1: have to dig them up, and even after you dig
Speaker 1: them up, you might not get them because one of
Speaker 1: the things that I didn't know about dandelions is I
Speaker 1: knew they grew from a tap root. You have to
Speaker 1: get that tap root up or else it's just feudile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that tap root can grow, depending on the age
Speaker 1: of the dandelion, over a dozen feet meters four meters
Speaker 1: into the ground meters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that makes.
Speaker 1: It really hard to get rid of. And so if
Speaker 1: you're like a grounds keeper for a golf course or
Speaker 1: something like that, you have to really keep up with
Speaker 1: the dandelions because they'll spread really fast and they're really
Speaker 1: hard to get rid of once you do start trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, I got to say this last fact
Speaker 4: from Kyle because it goes back to the lawns, but
Speaker 4: this really kind of drives at home of about how
Speaker 4: not great a perfect green lawn is for our society.
Speaker 4: There's a study in two thousand and five residential lawns
Speaker 4: in the United States make up two percent of the
Speaker 4: land but require more irrigation than any domestic agricultural crop.
Speaker 1: I've got one to piggyback on that. Let's see the
Speaker 1: US Fish and Wildlife Service says that homeowners use up
Speaker 1: to ten times more pesticides per acre then farmers use
Speaker 1: on their crops. So we're using this stuff over using it,
Speaker 1: and we're using it on stuff that's not productive land
Speaker 1: just to keep up with the Joneses. So they don't
Speaker 1: think we're communist spies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I walk Gibson in the mornings and
Speaker 4: there are the only lawns that he ever like rubs
Speaker 4: his face in are the most perfect green ones. And
Speaker 4: I know that it's because they have recently been sprayed,
Speaker 4: and he smells it and is trying to rub all
Speaker 4: in that stuff, and it drives me bonkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a like I would love to just
Speaker 1: let my lawn and use me too. Just go to
Speaker 1: like wildflowers, go to weeds, you know, just mow it.
Speaker 1: You keep it mowed, but at a higher height. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you just let this stuff grow and we would be
Speaker 1: completely we would stick out like a sore thrum from
Speaker 1: the rest of the neighborhood, so much of their neighbors
Speaker 1: would be mad at us. That's how that's how entrenched.
Speaker 1: The idea of having a perfect lawn is still in
Speaker 1: the United States, depending on where you live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, And like no one around there even
Speaker 4: does like permaculture and you know, other options besides just
Speaker 4: letting it grow wild and crazy.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's nuts. So we definitely draw a line.
Speaker 1: So we're like, Okay, we'll keep up with the lawn,
Speaker 1: but don't touch the you know, the shrubbery, the perennials,
Speaker 1: the garden essentially, right, But people will hire the same
Speaker 1: company to like treat their lawn with chemicals, to spray
Speaker 1: their bushes and spray their gardens with chemicals to kill
Speaker 1: off the bugs. And then they have to go in
Speaker 1: and try to recreate the stuff that the bugs are
Speaker 1: doing for free, the services they're providing because you've killed
Speaker 1: off the bugs it's it's insane to me, So we
Speaker 1: definitely don't don't. We don't cot into that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was speaking of bugs. It was a scientific
Speaker 4: review in twenty nineteen that found that the global massive
Speaker 4: insects is falling at a rate of about two and a.
Speaker 3: Half percent per year.
Speaker 4: And dandelions is a high high on the list of pollinators.
Speaker 4: Caterpillars love munching on them, Moths loves munching on them,
Speaker 4: and all those bees and butterflies love doing their thing
Speaker 4: on them. So even you know, I'm not trying to
Speaker 4: shame people, but let's say you do like your lawn
Speaker 4: and everything, even waiting in the spring, like longer to
Speaker 4: cut it, even cutting it higher, letting the dandelions grow
Speaker 4: up a little bit before you start whacking them down.
Speaker 4: Even that minimal amount will help out a little bit.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is a non chemical way I saw to
Speaker 1: treat your turf grass for dandelions is to let your
Speaker 1: grass grow longer than you have been like cutting it
Speaker 1: at a higher mower height.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because as.
Speaker 1: We talked about, dandelion leaves are so low growing that
Speaker 1: the grass will shade out and out compete the dandelions.
Speaker 1: So if you really do want to get rid of dandelions,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to use chemicals. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: good way to do it from what I've seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: Some states have actual programs or just one in Minnesota
Speaker 4: called Lawns to Legumes, which is a great title. They
Speaker 4: launched that in twenty nineteen where they just basically incini
Speaker 4: incentivized people to say, get rid of that lawn, put
Speaker 4: in flowering plants, put in beds. You can have a
Speaker 4: rebate if you have a pollinator friendly native wildflower scene
Speaker 4: at your house.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't look up the amount, but I would
Speaker 1: guess at a minimum the rebate is worth a million dollars, right,
Speaker 1: that'd be my guess, you think. So, there's a couple
Speaker 1: other things that I found that dandelions, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you looked at it or not, that they kind
Speaker 1: of provide services to the plants growing around them, including grass,
Speaker 1: because as we mentioned, those tap roots, they grow really deep,
Speaker 1: and as they're growing deep, they're actually accessing nutrients that
Speaker 1: other plants around them, again, including grass, the roots of
Speaker 1: those plants can't reach because it's too deep, and it
Speaker 1: brings those nutrients up toward the surface, and as the
Speaker 1: dandelion dies off, the other plants to get to eat
Speaker 1: those nutrients that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to.
Speaker 1: And those same roots also air rate and loose and
Speaker 1: compacted dirt too, which makes it easier for the plants
Speaker 1: around the dandelions to grow.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Is there anything dandelions can't do?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're not super fragrant.
Speaker 1: No, that's true. They're pretty much useless in that sun.
Speaker 3: But they can grant a child of wish.
Speaker 1: They sure can, man, they sure can. I remember doing
Speaker 1: that so many times. I keep trying to do that
Speaker 1: with my dandelion puffhead in resin and it's not working.
Speaker 4: I don't have anything else, so I'm kind of looking
Speaker 4: over the list here, I kind of all over the place.
Speaker 4: But it's just sort of one of those episodes where
Speaker 4: it's like, well, here's a list of one hundred amazing things.
Speaker 4: And so sometimes those are a little tougher to organize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they can be pretty fun too. I had
Speaker 1: fun at least.
Speaker 3: How about you and that rubber thing? Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Since neither one of us has anything else about dandelions,
Speaker 1: and we're going to call it quits on this episode,
Speaker 1: which means we've just activated listener mail.
Speaker 3: You know, no listener mail today.
Speaker 4: Because what we're going to do with something we haven't
Speaker 4: done in a while is help support and bring some
Speaker 4: attention to a great cause, our friends from the Cooperative
Speaker 4: for Education aka co ED, whose mission it is to
Speaker 4: break the cycle of poverty and Guatemala through education. And
Speaker 4: we've been working with them for fifteen years, and we
Speaker 4: got a new thing coming up with them, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, we do. So first, let me just explain over
Speaker 1: one point three million dollars and contributions have been made
Speaker 1: to co ED thanks to our partnership with them at
Speaker 1: stuff you should know for fifteen years. That's really good,
Speaker 1: if you ask me, that's incredible, which means that one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty kids have been given like a huge
Speaker 1: leg up to escape poverty and create like break intergenerational
Speaker 1: poverty and create literally like a new life for their
Speaker 1: entire family from that point on.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: You know, we went down there, I guess fifteen years
Speaker 4: ago when they invited us very early on and stuff
Speaker 4: you should know canon, yeah, in our history, and we
Speaker 4: went down to Guatemala and those shows we did some
Speaker 4: shows on that trip and that visit we get to
Speaker 4: actually hear Jerry speak, which is pretty exciting. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: they're just great that we've been working with them ever
Speaker 4: since and the fact that the stuff you should know
Speaker 4: Army has raised one point three million bucks for them
Speaker 4: over the past fifteen years is going to be a
Speaker 4: real proud part of our legacy. But we have a
Speaker 4: call to action, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, so you can joined we're starting a drive essentially,
Speaker 1: right now, that's right. You can join the cooperative, which
Speaker 1: is a program of theirs, for twenty dollars a month
Speaker 1: and you'll collectively sponsor. There are a bunch of students
Speaker 1: in the Rise Youth Development program, right, that's right, and
Speaker 1: so it's going to get spread out. You're going to
Speaker 1: be helping a bunch of kids at once, so you
Speaker 1: can feel good like five times over with each each
Speaker 1: monthly donation. And then in twenty twenty five, more than
Speaker 1: eleven hundred students will be able to start school in
Speaker 1: World Guatemala, which will be their biggest class ever. They
Speaker 1: need help to make that happen, which is why we're
Speaker 1: saying join the cooperative.
Speaker 4: That's right, and as an incentive if this is for you.
Speaker 4: If you set up your gift by Tuesday, December third,
Speaker 4: then you are signed up for a chance to do
Speaker 4: a virtual hangout with Josh and I. We do this
Speaker 4: every year around the same time. It's always a lot
Speaker 4: of fun. We hang out with I don't know, if
Speaker 4: six or eight people all over the country and they
Speaker 4: get to just you know, ask us questions and tell
Speaker 4: us that we're cool or dumb or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's your chance to really hand it to us if
Speaker 3: that's what you're after.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, hopefully don't do that, but sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess if you've given to co ED and you
Speaker 1: deserve to do whatever you want to with, that's right.
Speaker 4: So just go to Cooperative for Education dot org. That's
Speaker 4: the word cooperative f o R education dot org slash
Speaker 4: s y s k and start giving.
Speaker 3: Now. A little bit goes a long way down there.
Speaker 1: Yes, And in the meantime, while you're looking up Cooperative
Speaker 1: for Education dot org slash s y s k, you
Speaker 1: can also send us an email. Send it off to
Speaker 1: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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