Doubtless each tiny flower was once a five-petaled blossom, for in the five teeth at the top and the five lines are indications that once distinct parts have been welded together to form a more showy and suitable corolla.Each floret insures cross-pollination from insects crawling over the head, much as the minute yellow tubes in the center of a daisy do (q.v.).Quantities of small bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles - over a hundred species of insects - come seeking the nectar that wells up in each little tube, and the abundant pollen, which are greatly appreciated in early spring, when food is so scarce.In rainy weather and at night, when its benefactors are not flying, the canny dandelion closes completely to protect its precious attractions.Because the plant, which is likely to bloom every month in the year, may not always certainly reckon on being pollinated by insects, each neglected floret will curl the two spreading, sticky branches of its style so far backward that they come in contact with any pollen that has been carried out of the tube by the sweeping brushes on their tips.Occasional self-fertilization is surely better than setting no seed at all when insects fail.Not a chance does the dandelion lose to "get on."After flowering, it again looks like a bud, lowering its head to mature seed unobserved.Presently rising on a gradually lengthened scape to elevate it where there is no interruption for the passing breeze from surrounding rivals, the transformed head, now globular, white, airy, is even more exquisite, set as it is with scores of tiny parachutes ready to sail away.A child's breath puffing out the time of day, a vireo plucking at the fluffy ball for lining to put in its nest, the summer breeze, the scythe, rake, and mowing machines, sudden gusts of winds sweeping the country before thunderstorms - these are among the agents that set the flying vagabonds free.In the hay used for packing they travel to foreign lands in ships, and, once landed, readily adapt themselves to conditions as they find them.After soaking in the briny ocean for twenty-eight days - long enough for a current to carry them a thousand miles along the coast - they are still able to germinate.
The DWARF DANDELION, CYNTHIA, or VIRGINIA GOATSBEARD (Adepogon Virginicum; formerly Krigia Virginica) - with from two to six long-peduncled, flat, deep yellow or reddish-orange flower heads, about an inch and a half across, on the summit of its stem from May to October, elects to grow in moist meadows, woodlands, and shady rocky places.How it glorifies them! From a tuffet of spatulate, wavy-toothed or entire leaves, the smooth, shining, branching stem arises bearing a single oblong, clasping leaf below the middle.Particularly beautiful is its silvery seed-ball, the pappus consisting of about a dozen hairlike bristles inside a ring of small oblong scales, on which the seed sails away.Range, from Massachusetts to Manitoba, south to Georgia and Kansas.
A charming little plant, the CAROLINA DWARF DANDELION or KRIGIA(A.Carolinianum), once confounded with the above, sends up several unbranched scapes from the same tuffet.It blooms in dry, sandy soil from April to August, from Maine and Minnesota to the Gulf States.
Like a small edition of Lowell's "dear common flower" is the TALLDANDELION, or AUTUMNAL HAWKBIT (Leontodon autumnale), its slender, wiry, branching scape six inches to two feet high, terminated by several flower-heads, each on a separate peduncle, which is usually a little thickened and scaly just below it.Only forty to seventy five-toothed ray florets spread in a flat golden disk from an oblong involucre.They close in rainy weather and at night.From June to November, in spite of its common name, it blooms in fields and along roadsides, its brownish seed-plumes rapidly following; but these are produced at the frightfully extravagant cost of over two hundred thousand grains of pollen to each head, it is estimated.The Greek generic name, meaning lion's tooth, refers to the shape of the lobes of the narrowly oblong leaves in a tuft at the base.Range, from New Jersey and Ohio far northward.Naturalized from Europe and Asia.
FIELD SOW-THISTLE; MILK THISTLE
(Sonchus arvensis) Chicory family Flower-heads - Bright yellow, very showy, to 2 in.across, several or numerous, on rough peduncles in a spreading cluster.
Involucre nearly 1 in.high; the scales narrow, rough.Stem: 2 to 4 ft.high, leafy below, naked, and paniculately branched above, from deep roots and creeping rootstocks.Leaves: Long, narrow, spiny, but not sharp-toothed; deeply cut, mostly clasping at base.
Preferred Habitat - Meadows, fields, roadsides, saltwater marshes.
Flowering Season - July-October.
Distribution - Newfoundland to Minnesota and Utah, south to New Jersey.
It cannot be long, at their present rate of increase, before this and its sister immigrant become very common weeds throughout our entire area, as they are in Europe and Asia.