Dandelion Multi — the weed in your lawn that the apothecaries used to charge for

It's a quiet kind of feeling.

Nine plants and a couple of nutrients — the kind of thing a French grandmother in a country kitchen would have made you a tea from, and walked off into the garden to gather most of the ingredients herself.

A clean cream pot, the green band of our label running around it. Ninety vegan capsules inside. The dose is two capsules, one to three times a day, before meals. Bitterness on the tongue is the traditional cue for digestive plants, and the encapsulated form misses that — but if you tip a capsule into hot water, you'll smell some of the green-and-bitter character through the lid.

Two capsules, one to three times a day, before meals.

Taraxacum officinale — the common dandelion. The English name comes from the medieval French dent-de-lion, the lion's tooth, after the jagged edge of the leaf. The plant grows everywhere humans have ever walked. It is one of the most successful flowering plants on earth precisely because it is so undemanding.

Long before it was a weed, it was lunch. Roman cooks used the leaves in salads. Anglo-Saxon herbalists prescribed it. Dandelion root has been used in European herbal tradition as a bitter. The roots were dug up in autumn, dried, roasted and ground as a coffee substitute, particularly during wartime shortages. Even now, in any French jardin ouvrier in March, you can watch retired men picking the first young leaves before the flower comes — bitter, tender, the start of spring on the plate.

The two parts of the plant — leaf and root — have slightly different traditional uses. Both have travelled into the modern dandelion supplement, often together.

We use per 2-capsule serving — a meaningful dose, enough to give the formula its name and its character.

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is a legume, a relative of clover, used as a hay crop for cattle for thousands of years. The Persians grew it for war horses; the Greeks called it Medikai after the Medes who first traded it westward. Its roots reach extraordinary depths — sometimes fifteen metres — pulling minerals from soil layers most plants never touch.

That depth is why alfalfa earned its place in herbal cabinets long before it was a salad sprout. The leaf carries a useful spread of plant minerals and a wide chlorophyll content. We use 170mg per daily serving — a quiet, mineral-leaning grace note in this formula.

The juniper berry isn't really a berry; it's a fleshy seed-cone from a small evergreen shrub that grows on chalk downs and Scottish moors. Its smell is the smell of gin — sharp, resinous, piney. It is the botanical that flavours gin.

We use 100mg per daily serving — a small, supportive dose. The juniper isn't the headline. It's the friend who came with the dandelion.

Celery seed, from Apium graveolens, was known in Egypt and Greece long before it was eaten as a vegetable. The Greeks crowned victors at the Nemean Games with celery garlands. Hippocrates wrote about it.

The seed is also what celery salt is made of — ground seed mixed with sodium. In this formula it appears as a powder at 80mg per daily serving. Worth a note for anyone with a celery allergy — it shows up in the allergen warning on the label.

Five more green-and-bitter plants sit at small supportive doses, each carrying a long history of European or coastal-traditional use:

Nettle leaf — the sting plant, dried so the sting has gone.

Parsley leaf — the garnish nobody eats.

Kelp — Fucus vesiculosus, the bladderwrack of the Atlantic shoreline.

Watercress — Britain's quietly excellent native salad green; a brassica with a bright, peppery taste.

Radish — horseradish (Armoracia rusticana), the root of horseradish sauce.

Each appears at around 80mg in this formula. None is the headline; together they form a chorus around the dandelion.

Two essential nutrients carry the EFSA-authorised wording in this bottle. Magnesium at 66mg per serving (18% NRV) — contributes to electrolyte balance, normal muscle function, and a reduction of tiredness and fatigue.Vitamin B6, 24mg per serving (1714% NRV). Do not take more than 10mg of vitamin B6 a day from supplements unless advised by a doctor.

These two are the spine of the bottle. The plants are the headline. The nutrients are the backbone.

Lay it on a table — dandelion, alfalfa, juniper, celery seed, nettle, parsley, kelp, watercress, radish, magnesium, B6 — and what you've got is essentially a French country herb garden in a capsule, plus two minerals to keep the label honest.

The connecting thread is bitter and green. None of these plants is a single-active blockbuster. They're the kind of ingredients people in herb-eating cultures consumed in small amounts almost daily — in salads, in soups, in teas — as a quiet, ongoing piece of seasonal housekeeping.

We didn't pick eleven things at random. We picked eleven that have shared a tradition for centuries — the green-and-bitter palette of European herbal medicine, plus magnesium and vitamin B6.

Two capsules, one to three times a day, before meals. Most people start with two before lunch, see how that sits, and add a second dose if helpful.

Drink water alongside. Drink a glass of water with each dose. A glass of water with each dose is the simplest, oldest piece of advice in the category and it stands.

If after sixty days you see no reason to continue, stop. We'd rather have your trust for the next thing than your money for the wrong thing.

This is a food supplement — it complements a varied diet, doesn't replace one. Contains celery, other umbelliferae, and members of the parsley family — read the allergens panel if you have any history of celery or carrot-family sensitivity. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking diuretic medication, on lithium, on warfarin or any blood-thinner, taking thyroid medication (kelp content), or living with kidney or gallbladder issues, talk to your GP or pharmacist before starting. Don't exceed six capsules a day. Keep the bottle cool, dry and sealed.

If you've read this far, thank you. We tried to write the kind of page we'd want to read before spending money on a bottle of green-and-bitter capsules — no neon promises, no overblown language.

— Vitadefence