CYNTHIA DANDELION. 
THE DANDELION CYNTHIA. 
NATURAL ORDER, COMPOSITAE. 
CyntuHta DANDELION, Decandolle.—Acaulescent; scapes leafless, single, one-flowered ; leaves 
elongated, lance-iinear, entire or remotely toothed, rarely pinnatifid, the primary leaves 
oblong-spatulate. Scapes six to eighteen inches in height, several from the same root. 
Leaves some of them nearly as long as the scapes, more generally entire; when pinnatifid, 
the lobes are two or three on each side, triangular. A variety in the mountainous districts 
produces at length a short, decumbent stern. (Wood’s Class-Book of Botany. See also 
Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, and Chapman’s Flora of the 
Southern United States.) 
\ | MONG the best known plants is the Dandelion, and 
i/ when its yellow buds appear even children hail them as 
the harbinger of spring. As one of the earliest of spring flowers 
it has received particular attention. Our own poet, Percival, 
makes it an especial feature in his well-known “Ode to Spring:” 
“The yellow buds are breaking, 
The flowers in meadow are blowing; 
And gentle winds are playing 
Along the grassy vale, 
Around the airy mountain, 
And down the grassy vale.” 
But the common Dandelion is not a native flower. It came to 
this country with the white man, soon made itself at home, and 
is now found wherever cultivation goes. Nor is there any allied 
species of the genus native to the United States. But, in ancient 
times, our plant was supposed to belong to the genus 7yox7mon, 
which is closely related to 7Zaraxacum, the true Dandelion; and 
when we see the root-leaves (Fig. 4), and the long, slender 
achene (Fig. 3), it is not surprising that, in the condition of 
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