I was reading about foraging in the school library because i really want to eat plant but you really gotta know what you're doing with that
In discussing Dandelions, the author said that many people have awful first experiences with foraging because they eat plants that were growing in very bad conditions.
Dandelions particularly taste very bad when you try to eat miserable and struggling dandelions because their leaves get very bitter.
The author said sunlight makes them bitter, and also that the bitter chemicals build up in the plant with increasing age, but I have a hypothesis that it's a little different...
Plants make themselves taste bad when they are being heavily munched upon by herbivores, and even send chemical signals to other plants so they can prepare as well! Really amazing. I already knew that part. But I thought to myself...wait, if mowing has a similar effect as grazing, that would make the plants respond in a similar way...which means that mowing and weed-whacking and other forms of indiscriminately hacking and chopping down plants will have them all like "Ahh fuck! It happened again! I need to taste WORSE!"
Dandelions can grow back from being mowed down or even partially ripped up many times, and they're perennials. So my hypothesis is that people are getting into foraging by trying to eat a dandelion from their front lawn...but that dandelion has been trapped in an endless cycle of mowing for possibly years, and in the process has ascended into the World's Worst-Tasting Plant
That sounds perfectly reasonable actually. Time to hunt secluded dandelions for a taste test!
