COMMON DANDELION; BLOWBALL; LION'S-TOOTH; PEASANT'S CLOCK(Taraxacum Taraxacum; T.Densleonis of Gray) Chicory family Flower-head - Solitary, golden yellow, to 2 in.across, containing 150 to 200 perfect ray florets on a flat receptacle at the top of a hollow, milky scape 2 to 18 in.tall.Leaves: From a very deep, thick, bitter root; oblong to spatulate in outline, irregularly jagged.
Preferred Habitat - Lawns, fields, grassy waste places.
Flowering Season - Every month in the year.
Distribution - Around the civilized world.
"Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.
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Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease.
'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand Though most hearts never understand To take it at God's value, but pass by The offered wealth with unrewarded eye."Let the triumphant Anglo-Saxon with dreams of expansion that include the round earth, the student of sociology who wishes an insight into cooperative methods as opposed to individualism, the young man anxious to learn how to get on, parents with children to be equipped for the struggle for existence, business men and employers of labor, all sit down beside the dandelion and take its lesson to heart.How has it managed without navies and armies - for it is no imperialist - to land its peaceful legions on every part of the civilized world and take possession of the soil? How can this neglected wayside composite weed triumph over the most gorgeous hothouse individual on which the horticulturist expends all the science at his command; to flourish where others give up the struggle defeated; to send its vigorous offspring abroad prepared for similar conquest of adverse conditions wherever met to attract myriads of customers to its department store, and by consummate executive ability to make every visitor unwittingly contribute to its success? Any one who doubts the dandelion's fitness to survive, should humble himself by spending days and weeks on his knees, trying to eradicate the plant from even one small lawn with a knife, only to find the turf starred with golden blossoms, or, worse still from his point of view, hoary with seed balloons, the following spring.
Deep, very deep, the stocky bitter root penetrates where heat and drought affect it not, nor nibbling rabbits, moles, grubs of insects, and other burrowers break through and steal.Cut off the upper portion only with your knife, and not one, but several, plants will likely sprout from what remains; and, however late in the season, will economize stem and leaf to produce flowers and seeds, cuddled close within the tuft, that set all your pains at naught."Never say die" is the dandelion's motto.An exceedingly bitter medicine is extracted from the root of this dandelion, formerly known as T.officinale.Likewise are the leaves bitter.
Although they appear so early in the spring, they must be especially tempting to grazing cattle and predaceous insects, the rosettes remain untouched, while other succulent, agreeable plants are devoured wholesale.Only Italians and other thrifty Old-World immigrants, who go about then with sack and knife collecting the fresh young tufts, give the plants pause but even they leave the roots intact.When boiled like spinach or eaten with French salad dressing, the bitter juices are extracted from the leaves or disguised - mean tactics by an enemy outside the dandelion's calculation.All nations know the plant by some equivalent for the name dent de lion = lion's tooth, which the jagged edges of the leaves suggest.
Presently a hollow scape arises to display the flower above the surrounding grass.Bridge builders and constructing engineers know how yielding and economical, yet how invincibly strong, is the hollow tube.March winds may buffet and bend the dandelion's stem without harm.How children delight to split this slippery tube, and run it in and out of their mouths until curls form! At the top of the scape is a double involucre of narrow, green, leaf-like scales similar to what all composites have.Half the involucre bends downward to protect the flower from crawling pilferers, half stands erect to play the role for the community of florets within that the calyx does for individual blossoms.
When it is time to close the dandelion shop, business being ended for the day, this upper-half of the involucre protects it like the heavy shutters merchants put up at their windows.
Seated on a fleshy receptacle, not one flower, but often two hundred minute, perfect florets generously cooperate."In union there is strength" is another motto adopted, not only by the chicory clan, but by the entire horde of composites.Each floret of itself could hope for no attention from busy insects; united, how gorgeously attractive these disks of overlapping rays are!
