Can Bearded Dragons Eat Dandelion Flowers?

Can bearded dragons eat Dandelion flowers? Are Dandelion flowers good for bearded dragons? The answer may surprise you – yes, bearded dragons can eat Dandelion flowers and many absolutely love them.

What Are Dandelion Flowers For Bearded Dragons?

Dandelions are often considered to be a weed and a complete pest when it comes to a nicely manicured lawn. But surprisingly, they’re actually really quite good for so many reasons. They’re a source of nectar for insects such as bees, butterflies and other insects and they actually have some herbal uses for humans too.

Taraxacum officinalis is the Latin name for Dandelions and the bright yellow flower is even quite pretty. Especially after a long hard winter of snow, they’re like miniature suns when the blossom in the spring.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society, Dandelion flowers are used in the making of Dandelion Flower wine and the leaves can be added to salads^[1].

Can Bearded Dragons Eat Dandelion Flowers?

Bearded dragons can definitely eat Dandelion flowers, and many really enjoy them. Some just wear them as hats of course. But that’s bearded dragons for you, they’re all different!

Bearded dragons will often take dandelion flowers from your hand if you offer one to them. Perhaps it’s the colours they like, or they just know they’re a tasty treat.

Advantages Of Dandelion Flowers For Bearded Dragons

Disadvantages Of Dandelion Flowers For Bearded Dragons

How Should I Feed Dandelion Flowers To A Bearded Dragon?

Dandelion flowers can either be fed to your bearded dragon by hand as a treat, or can be added to a salad bowl to add some additional colour and perhaps help entice them to eat the rest of the salad. In many cases though they’ll eat the flowers and leave the rest. Picky, they are.

Dandelion flowers can be picked from your own garden or meadows where you find them – however, care must be taken to ensure there’s no risk of pesticide contamination. For this reason, wild meadows should be sought rather than areas that run alongside arable farmland for example.

Be careful even in your own garden as spraying Rosebushes with pesticides to get rid of Aphids (greenfly) could potentially have overspray impacting on your dandelion flowers.

Washing may help reduce the risk.

Many people are concerned with the risk of parasites from any plants or insects from outside. We think the risk is overstated, particularly when it comes to flowers. All bearded dragons will have some level of parasites, it’s only when they become too many that there is a problem. Healthy, well hydrated and warm bearded dragons will likely not notice any issues.

How Many Dandelion Flowers Should I Feed A Bearded Dragon?

It’s difficult to find any nutritional data on dandelion flowers, though there is some on Dandelion Leaves so we can have a rough idea of their constitution.

Given they have a rather bitter taste, it should be fair to assume there’s a reasonable amount of oxalate present in the chemical makeup of the Dandelion leaf. This oxalate may or may not be present in the flower, if indeed it is present in the leaf.

Without solid data to back up our assumptions on Dandelion flowers we can really only go by anecdotal evidence. And anecdotally, there seems to be little reason to assume you shouldn’t feed as many dandelion flowers as you want. Your bearded dragon may only eat one or two at a time anyway.

As part of a balanced nutritional salad there seems to be no evidence to suggest too many would be possible.

We’ve removed the table of nutritional information from this post because it is literally a guess based on the information available for the leaves. You can find the nutritional information for dandelion greens here.

Can I Grow My Own Dandelion Flowers For Bearded Dragons?

Seeds are available for Dandelions – whether they flower or not will depend a lot on your care of them and that’s not something we can advise on particularly well.

Ironically, considering dandelions are such prolific weeds in the countryside of the UK, we tried growing some from seed. They didn’t do well at all. However, they were in a relatively shallow container of soil and perhaps they preferred a lot deeper pot to allow their very large taproot to take hold.

Nevertheless, we just use the from the garden now – they grow like, well, weeds out there.

Summary

So, can bearded dragons eat dandelion flowers and are dandelion flowers OK for bearded dragons? The answer is yes, dandelion flowers can be fed to your bearded dragon whenever you want to and as often as you want to.

We’d always recommend mixing all these flowers, leaves and vegetables up to provide a balanced diet though.

Frequency: STAPLE.

For more information on other vegetables that Bearded Dragons can eat, please see our larger overview post at ‘What Vegetables Can Bearded Dragons Eat?’

References

1: Royal Horticultural Society – Dandelion / RHS Gardening fetched on 9th May 2021 from https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=1012

Featured Image by Bearded Dragons Rock