Other names for the dandelion

Every day on the BBC homepage there is a 'fact of the day' from the comedy programme QI. Yesterday the fact began "Dandelions are also known as pissy beds, jack-piss-the-bed, wet-the-bed, wet-a-bed, tiddlebeds and pissenlit ..." I'm afraid I can't complete the rest of it, as it's a different fact today and that one has disappeared. However, I did check the info when I read it yesterday.

 

The Oxford English Dictionary has even more synonyms - pish-the-bed, pee-the-bed, pissy-pee and pissabed are four. All of these names derive from the fact that dandelion was once well known as a diuretic - and you didn't need to eat it to get the effect; a citation in the OED says that it was believed that just picking a dandelion could cause you to wet the bed.

 

The standard name of the flower, dandelion, derives from the French dent de lion or 'lion's tooth', so-called because of the shape of the leaves.

Comments

[Paolo]

This reminds me, I always wondered if there are other names for the dandelion fruit other than "clock", which sounds rather informal to me (I am not a native speaker).
Thanks,

Paolo

[Virtual Linguist]

Clock seems fine for most purposes, Paolo. I've just looked it up and the technical terms used for this seem to be pappus, cluster of achenes or coma. However, I think that you would have to be a botanist to use these words. Puffball is an informal or dialect word for the clock, and for the flower the dandelion itself, but I've never heard anyone use it (mind you, I'm not a gardener).