THREE YELLOW
GARDEN FLOWERS
PART 3
The third common yellow flower which often invades a horticulturalist’s garden
is the dandelion. Even worse than the daisy and buttercup, this flower is rarely
considered anything except degenerate. But why is a dandelion a dandelion?
According to most lawn growers this flower really is
another ‘weed’. Moreover very few gardeners would
ever give me the time of day for liking dandelions and
will always dig them up by the roots at the earliest
opportunity. I still see their bright yellow head full
of hundreds of filaments as beautiful circles of joy,
which help many tiny creatures’ in their lives.
Holding up the yellow head is a long green stem,
much thicker than the daintier daisies and buttercups.
Moreover, when I break these stems, a white sticky
and bitter milk emerges, which long ago prevented
me from playing with them with as much ease as
with other flowers. Even so I still managed to make
my ‘natural golden jewellery’ in those glorious days
of springtime.
As everyone knows, these heads give way to a grey
globe of fragile hair-like seeds known as Dandelion
Clocks, which get blown away by the wind, making
them act like parachutes. This method of dispersal
increases the flowers’ chances of spreading and
growing almost anywhere, which is why the flower is
so resilient and successful. Dandelions were also an
early plaything of mine when we carefully held up the
clock to blow away as many seeds as possible. We
often had competitions to see who could disperse
the most in one single puff, but somehow we never
managed to get a definite winner at any time.
It was many years later that I found out how the
dandelion got its name. It was after William the
Conqueror’s invasion when French became the
dominant language of the aristocracy, literature and
the realm. They renamed the flower as dents de lion,
which means the teeth of the lion. This comes not
from the flower’s head, but from the leaves which
have jagged edges shaped like savage teeth.
The flower grows from the long, stiff white root
which makes the dandelion a much harder flower to
rip out of the ground, and usually quite cumbersome
to dig up.
Lion’s teeth have been smiling at us since the Battle
of Hastings, and exactly 950 years later I am still
happy to have them in my wildlife garden. They join
daisies and buttercups as one of my favourite wild
flowers which need no help to
grow at Millstream Fork and
remind me of those care-
free days of childhood.
Contact Andy on 01895 520184
email [email protected] www.ffesorg.uk
Andy Mydellton, author and journalist, leads the South Buckinghamshire registered
charity, the Foundation for Endangered Species. Being based in South Bucks, they
are in a position to advise people in this area about wildlife.
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