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
Oxalis stricta sometimes added to salads for decoration and flavoring. These can also be chewed raw (along with other parts of the plant, but not the root) as a thirst-quencher. The green pods are pleasant raw, having a juicy crisp texture and a tartness similar to rhubarb in flavor. The leaves can be used to make a flavored drink that is similar in taste to lemonade, and the whole plant can be brewed as herbal tea that has an aroma somewhat like that of cooked green beans. The juices of the plant have been extracted from its greens as a substitute to