536 COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 
the whole colony is fertilized to the center; florets all perfect and 
fertile, the rays five-toothed at their tips; bracts of the involucre in 
two series, the outer ones short, spreading, often reflexed at matur- 
ity, the inner ones smooth, linear, erect in a single row, long enough 
to enfold the flowers after their first opening. Achenes brown, 
oblong, angled, and ridged, set around the top with fine, spinous 
tubercles, the tip extending in a slender beak, bearing a copious 
pappus of fine, white hairs. (Fig. 369.) 
Young Dandelion plants are excellent salad and pot herbs; the 
roots are used in medicine and more than a hundred thousand pounds 
are imported annually, notwithstanding the abundant home-grown 
product. The time for collection is in autumn when the roots are 
well stored with sustenance for the next season’s growth, at which 
time the milky juice is thickest and the root most bitter. The price 
is four to ten cents a pound. 
Means of control 
One method, and usually the one practiced in small lawns and 
often in large public parks, is the diligent, persistent use of spud or 
knife, cutting below the ground. The plants sprout again, and have 
to be cut again, but if no leaf-growth is allowed to feed the roots 
even old ones must finally starve. A pinch of dry salt applied to 
the root at the time of cutting off the crown, will retard recovery. 
But winged weeds are constantly “blowing in” to replant the 
ground, and seedling Dandelions, with taproots still short and 
slender and leaves finely hairy, may be killed with chemical sprays ; 
old plants with long, well-filled roots and smooth leaves are not 
much if at all affected. But if lawns and parking are systemati- 
cally sprayed throughout the growing season with Copper sulfate 
or Iron sulfate, the grass will not be injured, seedling Dandelions 
will be destroyed, and the hairy, opening buds of old plants will 
be injured sufficiently to check development of seeds. Too often 
it is forgotten that the plants of roadside and waste places must 
not be neglected, even though growing at some distance, if 
property-owners expect any degree of success in keeping out the 
intruder. “Everlastingly keep at it’? must be the motto of one 
who fights this weed. 
