Taraxacum officinale and is derived from the word "opificina", later "officina", meaning a workshop or pharmacy. The flowers are used to make dandelion wine, the greens are used in salads, the roots have been used to make a coffee substitute (when baked and ground into powder) and the plant was used by Native Americans as a food and medicine. Dandelions are harvested from the wild or grown on a small scale as a leaf vegetable. The leaves (called dandelion greens) can be eaten cooked or raw in various forms, such as in soup or salad. They are probably closest in character to
Dandelion Wine his ten-year-old brother Tom and his father to pick fox grapes. While Tom and his father act like today is just an ordinary day, Douglas senses an inexplicable presence around them. When Tom initiates a friendly rough-and-tumble fight between the two of them, Douglas suddenly realizes what it is: the revelation that he's alive. He finds it to be a glorious and liberating feeling. Chapter 3 (Dandelion Wine) — Dandelion wine is presented as a metaphor of summer here, bottled for the winter season of illnesses and wheezing. In Douglas' words: "Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue.