Yellow and Orange 



formerly known as T. officinale. Likewise are the leaves bitter. 

 Although they appear so early in the spring, they must be espe- 

 cially tempting to grazing cattle and predaceous insects, the ro- 

 settes remain untouched, while other succulent, agreeable plants 

 are devoured wholesale. Only Italians and other thrifty Old- 

 World immigrants, who go about then with sack and knife col- 

 lecting the fresh young tufts, give the plants pause ; but even 

 they leave the roots intact. When boiled like spinach or eaten 

 with French salad dressing, the bitter juices are extracted from the 

 leaves or disguised — mean tactics by an enemy outside the dande- 

 lion's calculation. All nations know the plant by some equivalent 

 for the name dent de lion = lion's tooth, which the jagged edges 

 of the leaves suggest. 



Presently a hollow scape arises to display the flower above 

 the surrounding grass. Bridge builders and constructing engi- 

 neers know how yielding and economical, yet how invincibly 

 strong, is the hollow tube. March winds may buffet and bend 

 the dandelion's stem without harm. How children delight to 

 split this slippery tube, and run it in and out of their mouths 

 until curls form ! At the top of the scape is a double involucre of 

 narrow, green, leaf-like scales similar to what all composites have. 

 Half the involucre bends downward to protect the flower from 

 crawling pilferers, half stands erect to play the role for the com- 

 munity of florets within that the calyx does for individual blos- 

 soms. When it is time to close the dandelion shop, business being 

 ended for the day, this upper-half of the involucre protects it like 

 the heavy shutters merchants put up at their windows. 



Seated on a fleshy receptacle, not one flower, but often two 

 hundred minute, perfect florets generously cooperate. " In union 

 there is strength " is another motto adopted, not only by the chicory 

 clan, but by the entire horde of composites. Each floret of itself 

 could hope for no attention from busy insects ; united, how gor- 

 geously attractive these disks of overlapping rays are! Doubtless 

 each tiny flower was once a five-petalled blossom, for in the five 

 teeth at the top and the five lines are indications that once distinct 

 parts have been welded together to form a more showy and suit- 

 able corolla. Each floret insures cross-pollination from insects 

 crawling over the head, much as the minute yellow tubes in the 

 centre of a daisy do (see p. 271). Quantities of small bees, wasps, 

 flies, butterflies, and beetles — over a hundred species of insects — 

 come seeking the nectar that wells up in each little tube, and the 

 abundant pollen, which are greatly appreciated in early spring, 

 when food is so scarce. In rainy weather and at night, when its 

 benefactors are not flying, the canny dandelion closes completely to 

 protect its precious attractions. Because the plant, which is likely 

 to bloom every month in the year, may not alwavs certainly reckon 

 on being pollinated by insects, each neglected floret will curl the 

 two spreading, sticky branches of its style so far backward that 



342 



