Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 47 



The Yellow Dandelion 

 Compositae 



By Bertha M. Rice 



"If you are going to write about flowers," said a young friend, 

 looking over my shoulder, "don't waste your time on common weeds. 

 Who do you suppose will read about a dandelion and who is there 

 that cares about such a common pest?" 



And straightway I changed my text and erased the more com- 

 monplace statements I had made regarding this blossom like a 

 miniature sun this lovely though lowly flower. 



"Very well," I said. "Come into the library, and I will show 

 you lines of beauty and rich gems of thought penned by some of the 

 world's greatest thinkers and inspired writers." 



Here is what John Burroughs, the eminent naturalist, had to 

 say of this common dandelion : 



"After its first blossoming comes the second and finer and more 

 spiritual inflorescence, when its stalk, dropping its more earthly and 

 carnal flower, shoots upward and is presently crowned by a globe 

 of most delicate and ethereal texture. It is like the poet's dream, 

 which succeeds his rank and golden youth. This globe is a fleet of 

 a hundred airy balloons ; each one bears a seed which is destined to 

 drop far from the parent source." 



James Hurtis, an English poet, expresses similar thought in his 

 "Village Curate" : 



Henry Ward Beecher speaks of dandelions as "golden kisses 

 all over the cheeks of the meadow," and Thoreau calls them the gold 

 which he has on deposit in country banks, the interest on which is 

 to be health and enjoyment. James Russell Lowell wrote no finer 

 poem than his appreciative tribute to the yellow dandelion : 



"Dear common flower that groweth beside the way, 



Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

 First pledge of blithesome May, 



Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, 

 High-hearted buccaneers, o'er joyed that they 



An El Dorado in the grass have found, 

 Which not the rich earth's ample round 



May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me 



Than all the prouder summer blooms may be. 

 * * # * * 



' 'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now, 

 To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 

 Tho' most hearts never understand 

 To take it at God's value, but pass by 

 The offered wealth with unrezvarded eye." 



Dandelions are not only an exceedingly characteristic and pleas- 

 ant feature of the landscape, but are continually used to embellish 

 prose and poetry as instanced by Bret Harte in a "Blue Grass Pene- 



