[Liminal Letters] A Love Letter to Dandelion
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Not into weekly newsletters? You can opt-out of the weekly newsletter without removing yourself from other updates HERE! Hey, Reader! The dandelions are coming up and I'm planning on making some dandelion muffins this week which means I need to share my annual ode, love letter, song of soulful devotion to to these amazing flowers. Dandelion was perhaps my first true plant friend. I remember having so much joy seeing this plant as a child. Watching it turn its sunny face up to the sky and soak up the sun. Picking bouquets of the flowers for my mom. Making flower crowns. Watching the sticky, milky sap seep out of the picked stem. How stubbornly they resisted weeding and how (partially out of laziness and partially out my love their flowers and their fluffy seed balls) I would do my best to not yank up all the root. Because also how amazing that they’d keep growing and regenerate! Not to mention the practice of making a wish and sending their seeds flying freely on the winds, a part of child-me wishing I could fly away with them. Dandelion means so much to me as a witch, as a queer person, as a person living and trying to dream new ways of living in a world ravaged by Empire. Dandelion is everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you live in the city or out in the boonies. Wherever you are you can connect with dandelion. Dandelion is resilience itself. It makes its home at the margins, in the cracks, and fissures. Dandelion is unapologetically itself. Dandelion puts it’s roots deep and resists being uprooted. Dandelion flies far from home and thrives, making a home wherever it finds itself. A few years ago I told my mom I was gathering dandelion flowers to make dandelion muffins. She was amazed, shocked. My great-grandmother looked forward to dandelion season every year. She’d go out in the yard and gather the flowers, the leaves, even going so far as to dig up the roots to roast. I knew my great-grandmother as a kid, but I don’t remember this, so I’m glad my mother told me. But my mom said she’d always thought it was embarrassing. My mom shared with me how my great-grandmother was always in the yard in the summer digging up dandelions and frying up the leaves, root and flower to make sandwiches. With that story, in this moment, I felt connection across time. Not a regression, as though in this desperate time I’d reverted to old-fashioned ways. But rather, a cycle, an enduring practice and tradition of closeness to the earth and appreciation of this nutritious, bitter medicine - a slow weaving back into the natural cycles of earth and my ancestors. May we all return to such a cycle. As an ardent lover of this rebellious plant, I want to bust an incredibly prevalent myth about dandelion. It is often said that dandelion was brought to the US by colonists and that it isn’t native to this land. I see this claim go around every spring in spiritual, herbal, and environmental circles. In this claim, dandelion is positioned as a distinctly European flower. Sometimes it gets called invasive and becomes a metaphor for the ravages of Empire in North America. Sometimes it is called naturalized and put forward as a model for the ways that a transplanted species can come to live in harmony and right, reciprocal relationship with a new environment. Colonist may well have brought dandelion seeds with them, but the idea that dandelion as brought to North America by colonists and is not native to North America is FALSE. This is something indigenous people have been clear about, but the misinformation continues and this myth continues to be stated as a fact in the wellness, spiritual, and herbal communities. A simple check of the USDA Plants Database, shows taraxacum officinalis as both introduced (meaning non-native) AND native! If that’s not a big enough indicator that dandelion has been in this land for longer than colonizers and that - far from being something distinctly European - dandelion is of this land. Further indication of dandelion’s native status in the US is the fact that there are native taraxacum species that only grow in specific regions of the US - such as taraxacum californicum. More than all this scientific data, of course, are native people’s claims of dandelion’s native status in North America. Truly that alone should be sufficient to bust this myth. You can learn more about dandelion’s long history among native people here. This is something I will ALWAYS comment on when I see this myth spreading online and in response I have gotten a lot apathy. A lot of wondering why it matters, claims that since dandelion as a naturalized species is an inspiring story that it should be allowed to continue. But to claim that dandelion is a naturalized species that has learned to live in harmony with its new ecosystem, thereby denying the abundance of scientific and cultural information to the contrary perpetuates the norms of Empire is not benign. It furthers the cultural erasure that is part of the genocide of Native people in the Americas. By perpetuating a lie that obscures the true relationship that dandelion has to this land, it keeps the people seeking right relationship with the Earth from actually being able to access it. Attachment to dandelion as a non-native success story shows, in my opinion, an attachment to the colonizing mindset that we desperately need to shed. A similar version of this myth is often repeated about nettle and yarrow in herbalism circles. There are native varieties of both nettle (urtica spp.) and yarrow (achillea spp.). Meanwhile, plantain (plantago major & plantago lanceolota) is RIGHT THERE as a non-native, non-invasive naturalized species. It was introduced and spread by European colonizers to the US and despite its non-native status it thrives in harmony in native ecosystems and was even integrated into the herbalism practices of Native communities. (see Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer for more on plantain!) As spring blossoms around you and the dandelions begin to spring up in earnest, consider tapping into this amazingly magical, highly accessible plant! And I encourage you to connect with it in all its facets: as a resilient and defiant plant of borderlands and marginal areas, as a nuisance weed irritating those seeking a perfect monocrop lawn, as a plant of play and dreaming and sunny days, as a plant that is of this land, as a plant of deep ancestral magic (for folks of European, Asian, and/or Native lineages). Connecting with dandelion can be some of the simplest magic out there. Bring some more magic into your life by wishing on the next dandelion blowball you see! To add to it’s amazingness Dandelion is a prolific plant who has gifted us the magic of it’s continued propagation: make a wish, blow the seeds, dandelion will grant your wish. May dandelion help us all root into connection with the earth and may it bring you your biggest, wildest dreams this spring! And if you wanna join me in making dandelion muffins this week, I’ll be making a variation on this recipe! FREE meditation for empowered, interconnected energetic sovereignty!The muse struck this week and I was inspired to create a meditation for centering in yourself and finding your power to craft meaningful energetic relationships. If you are... Then this meditation is for you! In the free meditation, I lead you through a reflective journey to help you get acquainted with your energetic relationships and your sovereign power to interact with, grow, and influence those relationships, which is another way of saying connecting to your intuition and finding your power to make some fucking magic!
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