Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 49 



little girls love to separate their long, slender stems with their sharp 

 little teeth and with their lips roll them into tantalizing curls. Or 

 the hollow stems are cut into beads and made into chains 'and brace- 

 lets by the children. Small lads sometimes make miniature trom- 

 bones of the stems, the pitch of the tiny instruments being varied 

 according to the length of the trombone. 



Even after the little seed children have all left the parent stalk, 

 its stem is still conspicuous and has given rise to at least two of 

 its popular names. In the Middle Ages the dandelion was known as 

 "Monk's Head" or "Priest's Crown." Father Tabb says: "With 

 locks of gold today; tomorrow silver-gray; then blossom-bald." It 

 was this "blossom-bald" that was supposed to resemble a monk's 

 shaven head. The "blossom-bald" head is an interesting feature of 

 the plant. It is the little house in which all of the slender golden 

 fairies have lived ; for the dandelion is not a flower ; it is a whole 

 community. The dandelion mother often owns fully two hundred 

 of these minute yellow blossoms which form the composite flower; 

 and carefully she has reared and guarded her children. Like the 

 mother hen she lovingly gathers them under the protection of her 

 wing in rainy or inclement weather, closing them tightly in the 

 little flower house, and only when the weather is fair do they share 

 their precious pollen and wealth of nectar with innumerable mem- 

 bers of the insect world. When these flower children have lived 

 their brief day of happiness, the kind mother again encloses them 

 safe in her sheltering heart, where they mature their seeds, only to 

 reappear in ethereal beauty, provided with delicate silver wings all 

 ready to fly away into the wide, wild world to establish colonies of 

 their own. The parent dandelion, with all her children flown away, 

 has somewhat the appearance of a delicate parchment with a tiny 

 mark at the center of each figure where the seed was attached. I 

 can only liken it to a patient mother whose life work is finished, but 

 whose every wrinkle is a line of beauty. 



Another name and an unpoetical one frequently used for these 

 flowers in the Middle Ages was "swine's snout," due to the flower's 

 singular habit of closing its blossoms during unfavorable weather 

 and also when maturing its seeds. The name dandelion came from 

 "dent-de-lion," meaning lion's tooth. The jagged leaves are sup- 

 posed to somewhat resemble a lion's tooth. While others claim that 

 its roots gave rise to the name. Professor De Gubernatis connects 

 the name with the sun (Helios) and adds that a lion was the animal 

 symbol of the sun and that all plants named after him are essentially 

 plants of the sun. The dandelion bears similar names in nearly 

 all countries. In England the blossoms were called "dazzles" and 

 "dashels" or "dashel flowers." This "gamin of the fields," as it is 

 sometimes called, is a native of Greece, but has emigrated to all 

 parts of the civilized world. 



The dandelion need never be put on the protected list of Cali- 

 fornia flowers, or of any other place for that matter. It is quite 

 capable of taking care of itself. It is wholly impossible to eradicate 

 this determined globe trotter, so many and ingenious are its devices 

 for perpetuating its species. Volumes could be written about the 



