43 



may send up from one to six new plants, serious injury may occur to 

 the lawn by materially multiplying the number of plants present, 

 and also by frequently disturbing the turf by cutting. 



Henderson (1905) also found that cutting off the plants below 

 the ground with a spud only caused them to come up later. 



Bolley (1908) stated that cutting tests upon old and young dande- 

 lions demonstrated that plants cut three to four inches below the 

 surface readily send up new plants. He objected to the cutting 

 process, also, because of the time and labor required for effective 

 work, and because the turf is too much disturbed when really serious 

 work is done. 



At the outset of the work reported in this bulletin the writer had 

 arrived at the conclusion that digging the dandelion from lawns 

 when persistently followed and properly done, is quite effective in 

 destroying large plants. However, it requires much time and 

 patience, and often fails to kill more than a small percentage of the 

 plants. Unless practically all of the root is removed the remaining 

 portion will, in time, send up from one to several sprouts, with the 

 result that the number of dandelions is increased rather than dimin- 

 ished. 



In order to obtain more information regarding the behavior of 

 dandelions after being cut, the following experiments were conducted : 

 (1) In the spring of 1912, ten large dandelion plants on a rather unfer- 

 tile clay soil were carefully marked with stakes. They were uniform 

 in size, and each bore small flower stalks six to eight inches high. On 

 May 18, when some of the flowers were in bloom and others past 

 blooming, the plants were cut off just below the crown. Subse- 

 quently, these plants were cut off twice more during the season, the 

 last cutting being made on August 16. None of them were killed. 

 On the other hand, on October 30, at the end of the growing season, 

 there were twenty plants instead of the original ten plants. Only 

 one plant had remained single; all of the others had formed two or 

 three plants from the cut crown. (2) In an attempt to ascertain the 

 effect of deep cutting on dandelions growing under adverse conditions, 

 twenty large plants were selected in a location where the soil was 

 light in texture and quite dry during the greater part of the year. 

 The plants were marked with stakes, and then cut off about three 

 inches below the surface on April 26, 1915. On July 22, following a 

 period of very dry weather which had prevailed since cutting, thirteen 



