Why not dandelions?

Lettuce has been cultivated since Ancient Egyptian times. However it is still prone to diseases. So why wasn't the dandelion cultivated in the same way? Its leaves are just as delicious as the lettuce in salad and it is a lot more resistant to whatever is thrown at it (thus speaks the man who spent all afternoon weeding out the d**n things:mad:).
 
Mostly because dandelions doesn't need to be cultivated to come in great numbers, I'd gather, a bit like mushrooms. (I actually should check if it wasn't, if not cultivated, at least knowing some pre-gathering intervention)
 
Best i can tell, some varieties were.

On Cretes there is a specific variety they raise.
Otherwise, I would think since it grows in such large amounts, and faiy easily, there's no real reason to.
 
Mostly because dandelions doesn't need to be cultivated to come in great numbers, I'd gather, a bit like mushrooms. (I actually should check if it wasn't, if not cultivated, at least knowing some pre-gathering intervention)

True but that hasn't stopped mushrooms from being cultivated. So why not dandelions? They could have been subjected to the same type of selective cultivation as lettuce and thus produced specifically salad versions. Is it mainly because they are such a prolific weed (remembering that weeds are just plants in the "wrong" place)?
 
It seems very likely that if dandelions were cultivated, they'd be more vulnerable to disease.

Domesticated plants and animals are always bred for specific purposes (e.g. for lettuce size, growing speed), at the expense of all else - such as disease resistance. Wild lettuces aren't particularly known to be susceptible to disease, and grow successfully under a very wide array of conditions; in fact, as you mention, wild lettuce was originally a weed.
 

Driftless

Donor
Would part of the issue be the limited yield in a given area? For as prolific as dandelion spread is, there's not a lot of leaf mass there per square meter, compared to other edible vegetables. The flowers are used for wine, and that improves the overall yield. Can you eat the tap root? I've never heard of that happening, but....
 
That it doesn't taste as nice as lettuce might have a bit to do with it. It's not vile though, so I guess it's something that is relatively plausible as a cultivated plant.
 

Driftless

Donor
Nope, not in the least, well not in my lawn. It's like cutting the heads off a hydra!:mad:

When my kids were younger and played on the yard everyday, I did not put weed killer on the grass. Of course, I had an olympic class dandelion farm going.

I paid my kids a penny for every dandelion head they picked, and ten cents for every tap root pulled. As you note, the resilient "hydra" property of dandelions came back to bite me in the backside. I was shelling out $20 a week to each one - till even they got sick of plucking the flowers....:D
 
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