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
Taraxacum officinale be obtained from the flowers but little color can be obtained from the roots of the plant. "Taraxacum" is derived from the Arabic word ‘tarakhshagog’ (or 'tarakhshaqūn') for a bitter herb. It may be related to the Greek word ταρασσω (tarasso) meaning to disturb. "Officinale" means 'of the apothecaries' or 'medicinal'. Taraxalisin is a serine proteinase found in the latex of dandelion roots. Rudenskaya et al. (1998) found that taraxalisin hydrolyzes a chromogenic peptide substrate Glp-Ala-Ala-Leu-pNA optimally at pH 8.0. Maximal activity of the proteinase in the roots is attained in April, at the beginning of plant development after the