EDITOR’S LETTER: Five Fun Facts About Dandelion Tires
- k-england
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
By Karen England, for Let’s Talk Plants! April 2025.
Unbelievably this is my fifth April edition as editor of our newsletter. I started as the new Let’s Talk Plants! editor in August of 2019 (I didn’t become the president of the San Diego Horticultural Society until September of 2020), and I wrote my first April Fools article in 2020. (If you missed any of the six previous April Fools pieces that I’ve written [I wrote two in 2021!] I am happy to link all my April foolery below for you to enjoy if you so choose.)
Our newsletter publishes on the first day of every month, including April 1st, and for me, that is an opportunity not to be missed, and this year is no exception. Except! This year I’m writing about something everyone thinks is a joke every time I mention it but it is not.
If you were at the recent February 2025 General Meeting and heard me speak on the Five Herbs That Changed History and You Can Grow, then you heard me mention that the Continental Tire company is making tires from Dandelions. Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, is an ancient edible and medicinal herb.
What is an herb? It’s a useful plant; useful for cooking, crafting and medicine. (And tires...)
I first learned about Dandelion latex and the rubber being made from it after reading Jonathan Drori’s book Around the World in 80 Plants, 2021, Laurence King Publishing. Ever since then I decided that I’m going to be first in line to buy Dandelion Tires when they become available.
That’s right! And I am not fooling.
Excerpted from continentaltire.com - Five Fun Facts About Dandelion Tires:
"Most people view dandelions as a nuisance. But here at Continental Tire, we embrace the flowering weed as a key component to the future of tires.
That’s right, in conjunction with The Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Julius Kuehn-Institute, and EKUSA, Continental Tire has produced, and tested, the first tires where the tread is made 100 percent out of dandelion natural rubber as a polymer.
Between 10 and 30 percent of a car tire includes natural rubber and this is where Continental is hoping to make a difference.
Replacing the traditional rubber tree rubber with what has been coined, "Taraxagum" from dandelions. Here are a few fun facts about these weed-based tires:
1. Not just any dandelion – Continental has tapped the Russian dandelion as the dandelion of choice. This plant is a larger, more robust variant and can be produced in mass quantities. The roots of the Russian dandelion are less sensitive to weather than the dandelions in your yard and the roots are roughly the size of a large carrot.
2. Where in the world – Russian dandelions thrive in a large part of the world and can be cultivated on land not suitable for food production. Conversely, rubber trees require a hot, damp climate and grow only in a small part of the world known as, the “Rubber Belt,” an equatorial zone that stretches around the world.
3. Growth cycle – The growth cycle of a rubber tree is seven years whereas the growth cycle of a Russian dandelion is one year.
4. Testing complete - The first test tires were produced in summer 2014 from the WinterContact TS 850 P series and were tested in Sweden and at the Contidrom proving grounds in Germany with great success.
5. When will we see them - Continental plans to manufacture consumer road tires made from dandelion-derived rubber within the next five to 10 years."
Haven’t read any of Karen’s previous April Fool’s articles? Here they all are!
