Thursday, April 10, 2014

Pissenlits

Dandelions. Also called dent-de-lion (lion's tooth) in French. That's, in fact, the origin of the English name. But they're also called pissenlit (which can translate literally to pee-in-bed), perhaps because of their diuretic properties.

Our house is up on the hill that you can almost see in the background on the left. The river's at my back.

This field is filled with them. It's down at the bottom of our hill next to the river. Of course, I see dandelions everywhere right now. Our yard, the vineyard, and every other place I go. Dandelions are among the early spring flowers and are also among the first to set seed.

6 comments:

  1. We've seen pissenlits on the greengrocers' stall at our local market - a good source of vitamins and minerals. You can even buy the seeds. There's no need to cultivate them if you have a beautiful display like this. P.

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  2. My husband keeps mistakenly referring to our daffodils as dandelions :) Cracks me up.

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  3. Ooh, I'm imagining all the wishes you can make.

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  4. Walt - have you ever made the pastry dent-de-lions? Way back when I couldn't resist and bought a special pan to make them---which is still unused. They are basically ladyfingers. The pan is just sheet-metal in a zigzag pattern that you put the dough on.

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  5. Conditions for them must be perfect this year as I have never seen so many.

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  6. pauline, it's not something I would normally think to buy. I've not even eaten them, maybe once.

    judy, funny!

    mitch, if wishes were fishes...

    mary, no, I'm not familiar with that. I'm going to look it up.

    stuart, maybe it's all the water we had and the warm (ish) temperatures?

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