(Taraxacum oficinale Weber)

When it blooms, it is yellow and looks like the Sun. When ripe, its white crown resembles the Moon. And when the wind envelops it in its embrace, it scatters its heads of seeds like countless stars in the sky. Dandelion sums up all the wisdom of nature – not only by representing the three most important celestial bodies in the stages of its life-span. Only seemingly gentle and vulnerable, it is a symbol of perseverance and strength: dandelion is a “pioneer species”, one of those plants that will be the first to appear after major natural disasters, especially fires.

Today we try to remove it by pesticides, to banish it from our lawns and gardens, because we view it as a weed. American poet Emerson provided the wisest answer as to what a weed is: “A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” When we spray lawns with pesticides to destroy dandelion, we do not only act contrary to how our ancestors did (until the early 19th century grass was plucked to allow dandelion to spread), but we also act in diametric contravention of the nature of this plant: we spread carcinogenic poison to destroy a plant that has the power to destroy cancer.

Research conducted at the University of Windsor in Canada has proven its ability to destroy the T-cells of leukaemia and pancreatic and colorectal cancers. The substance that has this power is luteolin, a flavonoid with extremely strong antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumour effects.