Golden wonders
They are so common we take them for granted. Many gardeners wage war on them. But these wildflowers are marvels of natural design, vigorously well adapted to life in all its forms. Phil Gates celebrates the dandelion
Dandelions stir strong emotions. The poet John Clare was moved to celebrate their beauty in verse: “Shining like guineas with the sun’s warm eye on We almost think they are gold as we pass Or fallen stars in a green sea of grass.”
They can also provoke apoplexy among gardeners who strive to maintain a perfect lawn. I know of one who, outraged by dandelion seeds wafting over his hedge, used a flame-gun weeder to incinerate his absent neighbour’s o ending weeds. But most of us do admire dandelions for their beauty, even if they are sometimes a little unruly. A pasture turning gold under a blanket of their flowers is a joy to behold, one of the great natural floral spectacles of late spring. A road verge fringed with a ribbon of their golden blooms brightens a tedious car journey. A solitary plant, blooming from a crack in the pavement or a crevice in a wall, can light up a grim urban landscape. Somewhere, in every month of the year, you can find an irrepressible dandelion in flower.
Dandelion’s misfortune is that it is too good at colonising vacant spaces and tenaciously holding its ground. Germinating seeds quickly send down a deep tap root, better at accessing water during dry weather than shallow-rooted grasses. Meanwhile, expanding leaves grow slightly faster on their upper surface, forming a rosette that presses down on surrounding grass, suppressing competition. It hugs the ground, beyond the reach of whirling lawnmower blades or the teeth of grazing animals.
The bold yellow flowerhead holds over 100 florets, which spread outwards from the centre 
Bees rely on the plant as a source of pollen and nectar, though dandelions do not require pollinators to help them reproduce 
A small tortoiseshell butterfly siphons nectar from a dandelion in bloom A 19th-century botanical illustration of Taraxacum official, the common dandelion
Any tendency to poke that vulnerable growing point too far above the surface is counteracted by a contractile taproot, tugging it downwards. Dig one up and even a small root fragment left behind will regenerate new buds.
Beyond the confines of a garden or intensively maintained amenity grassland, dandelions are not usually serious agricultural weeds, being palatable and nutritive for grazing animals. When they flower, they make a vital contribution to the welfare of our threatened insect populations, and to the health and beauty of the countryside in general. That dazzling yellow floral disk is a collection of over 100 florets, opening in sequence over several days and each o ering pollen and nectar to insects – especially bees – when they need it most. Walk through a dandelion field at peak flowering and you will hear a hum of bumble, honey and solitary bees collecting food for their breeding colonies. The flowerheads will be swarming with hoverflies and smaller insects, together with butterflies such as commas, small tortoiseshells and peacocks that have emerged from hibernation.
The most remarkable aspect of this relationship is that most dandelion species don’t need insect visitors. If dandelions disappeared, it would be disastrous for the survival of our pollinator population. But if pollinators disappeared, it would have little impact on dandelion reproduction. Long ago, they acquired a floral aberration called apomixis, where the ovules develop directly into seeds without the need for fertilisation with pollen, so every dandelion seed is a clone of its parent plant. This might have happened at a time when pollinators were scarce, ensuring the survival of the species. Fortunately, dandelions never lost their capacity for prolific production of pollen and nectar.
BLOWN ON THE WIND
One consequence of their clonal reproduction is that if a mutation arises in a plant, changing form or flowering time for example, it is not diluted through crossing with the surrounding population. The aberrant individual simply perpetuates itself via apomixis, becoming a new species in its own right and sending out airborne copies that establish further populations. And that’s how nearly 250 species of dandelion came to be described and named; identifying them all in the field is perhaps one of the greatest challenges for a botanist.
The final phase in the dandelion life cycle, when the flower is transformed into what John Gerard described in his Herball in 1597 as a “round downie blowball, that is carried away with the wind”, is the familiar dandelion ‘clock’, composed of seeds each equipped with its own parachute. The umbrella of hairs –a ‘pappus’ in botanical parlance – carries the seed up and away on the wind, to pastures new. At sunrise in late spring, whole fields can shimmer with silvery dandelion clocks when their pappuses expand, drying in the sun’s heat. Sometimes goldfinches arrive to feed on the seeds, dislodging wraiths of downy seeds, ethereal ‘witches’ gowns’, into the rising thermals.
DANDELION FOR THE TABLE
Dandelion is related to lettuce and its leaves are similarly edible, though far more bitter than its cultivated cousin. To make it palatable, the foliage needs to be blanched, by covering plants so that young leaves grow in darkness before harvest. It is still eaten as a salad ingredient in France and Germany. In Britain, ‘dandelion and burdock’, the soft drink traditionally made from their fermented roots, is widely available, while the fermented flowers make a pleasant, straw-coloured wine. Dandelion coffee, made from dried, roasted and ground roots, was an emergency alternative during the Second World War, when real co ee was in short supply.
SEEDS OF SURVIVAL
The late Sir Edward Salisbury, weed expert and former director of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, found that each dandelion seed weighs 0.0008 grams, so you would need 6,250 to balance a 20p piece on the scales. Dandelion parachutes carry them hundreds of miles on dry, warm winds. A single large ‘clock’ contains about 180 seeds with more than 90% capable of germination. They can also pass unharmed through the gut of birds and mammals. Humans have unwittingly carried them to every continent, often in packing materials, so dandelions are among the most cosmopolitan plant travellers.
A PLANT OF MANY NAMES
One index of a wildflower’s cultural capital is rooted in the number of names it accumulates over the centuries, and the ways it has been used. Dandelion’s best-known – and most alarming – alternative epithet is pee-a-bed, celebrating its powerful diuretic and laxative properties and warning against consuming too much as an edible herb. Old herbals recommended it for promoting the flow of urine and cleansing the kidneys, a claim that has been upheld by modern medical research.
More romantically, our Victorian and Edwardian antecedents loaded flowers with passionate symbolism that could be passed discreetly between courting couples. The gift of a dandelion flower might send the recipient reaching for The Language of Flowers, a popular code book of species’ amorous meanings. Consulting my late grandmother’s copy, I see that a dandelion flower was considered to be ‘love’s oracle’, presumably because the recipient pulled o the petals, one by one, reciting “loves me, loves me not”, until the final floret delivered its decision.
The name dandelion is a corruption of the French dent-de-lion – lion’s teeth, describing the deeply serrated leaf edges – but botanist Geoffrey Grigson also collected 52 parochial British county names. Some, like ‘Devil’s milkplant’ (from Kirkudbrightshire), refer to the bitter, milky sap. Many, like ‘schoolboys’ clock’ and ‘tell time’ (both Somerset) allude to the childhood game of guessing the time according to the number of puffs needed to blow away all the seeds from its ‘clock’. ‘Monk’s head’ (from Wiltshire), likening the bare seed head left behind to a monk’s bald pate, is said to have medieval origins, while wishes (also Wiltshire) stems from the belief that the airborne seeds carry away our hopes and dreams with them.
And perhaps that’s the best name of all. This May, pick a dandelion clock, rediscover your inner child, blow as hard as you can and send the seeds skywards with a wish.
Phil Gates, retired senior lecturer in botany at Durham University, now teaches his grandchildren to blow dandelion clocks. He lives in Weardale, which is full of golden dandelions at this time of year.
RELATED SPECIES
Dandelion belongs to the daisy family, Asteraceae, with more than 32,000 species globally, including thistles and hawkweeds that share its parachute-assisted seed-dispersal method. Here are five to spot.
1 Orange hawkweed Pilosella aurantiaca A cluster of tawny flower heads surrounding a larger central bloom gives it the alternative name fox-and-cubs. This introduced species is widely naturalised.
2 Goat’s beard Tragopogon pratensis Also known as Jack-goto-bed-at-noon because its flowers close at midday, its clocks can be as large as tennis balls.
3 Wall lettuce Mycelis muralis Often growing in wall crevices, its airy sprays of small flower heads have fewer florets than a dandelion.
4 Purple-flowered melancholy thistle Cirsium heterophyllum Once a herbal cure for depression, this species found in northern upland hay meadows has purple-pink flower heads loved by pollinators.
5 Mouse-ear hawkweed Pilosella o cinarum This has lemon-yellow petals, often reddish underneath, and stems that creep through short vegetation.
