hiya bucks in Bourne End, Flackwell Heath, Marlow, Wycombe, Wooburn April 2017 | Page 10

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