English name for it is Blow Ball, because of its gauzy, feathered seed globe that every wind scatters.
The root of the dandelion is round, rough, tapering from crown to tip, almost black on the outside, brittle but tough, hollow in the middle, giving it strength with lightness, and with many root-hair water suckers. The leaves grow in spreading, flattened circles from the crown, with the flower stems set around the inner circle. Rain, falling on leaves and flowers, drains right into the hollow root. So the dandelion begins to use water at once.
The dandelion opens day after day, the blossom head growing larger, and its stem stretching and lengthening into a hollow, rubbery pipe. When pulled the stem stretches a little, like rubber, before it snaps. And out of the broken end oozes a thick, milky sap that stains the hands brown and makes them feel sticky. The sap of the rubber tree is a thick, milky fluid much like that of the dandelion. The dandelion has some rubber, resin, sugar, and a bitter medicine in its sap. Do you know of any other milky-sapped plants? Milkweed!
Did you ever split a hollow stem of dandelion in strips, and pull it through your mouth to make a bunch of curls? It tasted bitter, didn't it? Every part of the plant has that bitter taste, very strong in the old roots, just a hint in the young leaves. In the country, people often gather the young leaves of dandelion with mustard and curly dock leaves, and cook them for greens. They are better than spinach. The French use their dent-du-lion leaves for salad, as we use lettuce. Indeed, lettuce is a cousin of the dandelion, so is chicory or endive, another salad plant They both have that slightly bitter taste and milky sap. All of the plants of this family are useful in making medicines. One of them is called solidado, which means to cure, or to make whole.
When there were plenty of blossoms of the dandelion everywhere, each child brought a big- one, as round and yellow and as many rayed as a baby sun, to school. They traced the circles of yellow strap shaped petals, and tried to count the sunny rays. They got their finger tips all gold-dusty with pollen and learned, in that way, how the honey bees and butterflies carry pollen away on their legs. They found that the rays all had their stems sunk in a soft, green vase. With sharp finger nails they split the sides of the vases and spread them open. The rays just fell apart, so one could be picked out and studied under a microscope. Glowing upward from the
