YELLOW AND ORANGE WILD FLOWERS 
country to the other, and, notwithstanding its exceeding 
abundance, the first bright, solitary flowers are always 
a welcome sight in the spring. Children love to split 
the smooth, hollow flower stem with their tongues, 
and make long, spiral curls and ribbons. They also use 
them for blowing soap-bubbles, and for sipping water 
from a spring, or by blowing through them, produce 
funny noises. They have rare fun foretelling the 
number of children they may have, or even the time 
of day, by the number of puffs it takes to remove the 
downy fluff from the round, fuzzy white heads when 
the flower has gone to seed. In the spring, the leaves 
are gathered and eaten in immense quantities like 
spinach, or as a salad, by the immigrant Italians who 
unwittingly, have established an excellent and popular 
relish now served in our homes and hotels, and which 
is pronounced by epicures to be a most wholesome 
and appetizing salad. The root is ground and roasted, 
and used like coffee. The root and leaves are also used 
as a popular remedy for liver complaints, and for 
dyspepsia; also as a spring tonic. The thick, bitter 
root is sometimes twenty inches long, and grows deeply 
in the ground. The long, and extremely variable 
narrow leaf is irregular, and unequally toothed and 
notched with the wavy, jagged points inclined toward 
the stem. Its smooth surface is divided with a wide, 
thick, pale green midrib. Ofttimes the leaves resemble 
in outline a series of triangles or arrow heads. They 
taper toward the base into narrow winged stems that 
curve to form a pretty flat rosette. As the thick, green 
194 
