Foraging for Food - Part Eight, Dandelions

Every part of dandelions is basically useful for something.

The flowers, the leaves, and especially the roots.

But actually digging dandelion roots out of the ground is tricky. Collecting the flowers or leaves, that is easy. The leaves are practically brittle, they rip clean from the root very easily.

The roots however...

They are surprisingly deep and hard to dig out.

I discovered this back in July this year when I went foraging for dandelion roots for the first time and I had neglected to bring any ideal tools for the task of digging.

What I found on the way there was a large sharp piece of granite, which I thought would suffice as a digging tool. Boy was I wrong...

So I was digging away, getting very little actual root and lots of leaves, the granite rock I was using ended up snapping in two.

Yup.

Not kidding.

The dandelion root was so strongly held in place that it snapped a granite rock in roughly in half.

I then proceeded to use the slightly large half of the rock to continue digging, before eventually calling it a day. It was 7:45 PM and I needed to go.

I had lots of leaves and a little bit of root to show for my efforts. No flowers, they weren't blossoming at that time.

NEXT TIME, BRING DIGGING TOOLS.

Update this another day.