126 THE BOOK OF USEFUL PLANTS 



Boiled as greens, these young dandelion rosettes 

 are just what the hungry man craves and enjoys 

 in April. 



The constant demand for wild dandelion greens 

 in the Paris markets led the gardeners to bring in 

 the wild plants, select the best for seed, and thus 

 to improve the species, and make of it a garden pot 

 herb. The wild plant is stringy, and bitter in 

 flavor compared with the crisp, half-blanched, 

 mossy-fringed leaves of cultivated varieties. The 

 improvement is accounted for by good culture in 

 fertile soil. Blanched dandelion salad in early 

 spring is like the endive that comes in fall. 



GLOBE ARTICHOKE 



The French people are particularly fond of a 

 vegetable which is the flower head of a robust plant 

 belonging to the same family as the daisy and sun- 

 flower. All such plants bear numerous small 

 flowers, on a flat, circular disk, surrounded and 

 protected by green scales, called bracts, that over- 

 lap, in rows, concealing the flowers until opening 

 time. 



The edible parts of the globe artichoke are the 

 tender bases of the bracts, and the succulent disk 

 itself, after the flowers are removed. This is 



