I was standing in the check line in my local big box home improvement / garden shop recently when I noticed pile next to me shoulder high bags of lawn “ skunk and feed”for evenfall covering .
Pictured on the front of the bags was a clenched fist full of drained dandelions . I cringed .
Ever since I read Anita Sanchez ’s book , The Teeth of the Lion , I ’ve been in love with dandelions . In her small ( 121 page ) book , Sanchez , a senior environmental educator at the New York Department of Environmental Conservation , makes a compelling case for , if not loving , then highly respecting the uncouth dandelion .
Read more : Is it time to rethink what we consider “ weeds ” in our cubic yard and garden ?
Dandelion Flowers Are Lovely
Dandelions love sun . They will bear some dappled ghost , but they postulate sunshine to thrive .
One good grounds to make love dandelion is their lustrous , cheerful efflorescence after a foresightful wintertime . Bees and other insects are thirsty for nutrient - rich nectar as they come out in the early spring . The blowball is one of the first peak to blossom , cater them much needed food for thought .
The blowball ’s peak is really a bunch of many individual flowers . Each has its own source , providing a feast of ambrosia within each flower head .
Vicki Van Harlingen
You will be glad you left your blowball alone when the native bees and other insects show up in your garden to pollinate flowers and vegetable . They survived to work for your welfare in large part because they were well feed by dandelions .
Did you get it on that back in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries our grandparents planted dandelions for show ? They even demo them at county fair and other garden contest .
In Japan growers love their dandelions so much they bred them in colors of pinkish , blank and red . Today , several caller specializing in rare seed offer thewhiteandpink dandelion seedas well as a French culinary blowball seed that lay claim to produce less bitter greens . Vicki Van Harlingen
Vicki Van Harlingen
Dandelions Are Vitamin Powerhouses
Another reason to love dandelions is for their use to humans . Dandelions are not aboriginal to North America . They were fetch here by Europeans who knew their value as a medicative plant .
Dandelions can be found on every continent of the populace except Antarctica .
Early human did n’t get laid dandelion house a vitamin power station . The plant hold more Vitamin C than tomato , more Vitamin A than orange tree , and lots of vitamins D , K and B complex . blowball are also a great source of protein , iron , vitamin B2 , calcium and vitamin B1 .
Bt what our forebear did know from long experience was that , even before the snow meld , the dandelion put up a stem canker of green leafage and thick roots . So they made a fountain tonic made from those leaf and source to heal a variety of possibly fatal late wintertime wellness issues ( think scurvy and jaundice to name just two ) .
Your great expectant grandparent may have survived long enough to have child because they grew blowball in their garden .
Read more : Keep dandelions around for the sake of local bee population .
Dandelions Are Invaluable to the Ecosystem
One of the very safe reasons to get it on dandelions is their time value in our ecosystem .
Dandelions are also a seral species . Seral species are dauntless plants that quickly move into disturb dirt to lead off the renewal of an ecosystem after a flame , flood lamp , worm invasion or other born or manmade tragedy .
Imagine a woodland after a major fire . Nothing stay of the forest but ash and haggard tree trunks . The dry , hard blowball seed , just 1/8 column inch long and enshroud in microscopic barbs , is abide on the wind via its puff ball “ chute ” to the blacken soil .
It glides to solid ground , parachute intact above it , swaying mildly in the breeze . The sway activity help the barbed seeded player drill into the dirt to set about the cognitive operation of germination .
With just a little bit of moisture , the seed quickly germinates . The works acquire not only a cryptic pat root , but a web of tiny rootlet search for nutrient to power the dandelion ’s first localise of leaves .
In the process these roots “ till ” the dirt . They open up the priming coat for other seeds to germinate and begin the forest ’s renewal process .
That first set of dandelion impart decomposes and fertilize the barren soil . grass move in , then bush and finally tree , which fill in out the blowball . With the shade of the new forest , the blowball ’ employment is done , and it slowly pass off away .
