Drops of sun

   

Fresh green grass dotted with dainty , yellow dandelions and aromatic blooms of eucalyptus dangling from above. This is the first memory related to spring that comes to my mind. This was the sight I used to see when after finishing my exam I used to come out of my school to the open ground outside. To add more colour to that small space of green, there stood a lone mulberry tree with ripe, red and purple juicy mulberries.

 

I always wondered how the landscape changed suddenly at that time of the year.Dandelions were always one of the first to signal the arrival of that time of the year which brings warmth and loads of colours with it. These pretty, yellow heads would greet us on both sides of the road and would look like tiny drops of sunshine scattered on a carpet of green,a sight that was enough to suffuse cheer into every onlooker’s heart. A few of us would happily collect bunches of dandelions and take them home. If plucking dandelions brought joy to us, blowing away those miniature hairy parachutes off their globular heads was equally enjoyable.However, I got to know more about them years later. Actually, at that time I didn’t even know that they are called dandelions. None of us did. They were just ‘small yellow flowers’ for us.

 Common name: Dandelion

Botanical name: Taraxacum officinale 

             

Deeply toothed leaves

Dandelions are herbs that belong to the largest family of flowering plants that is Asteraceae. Sunflowers, marigolds, chrysanthemums too belong to the same family. The leaves are basal, deeply toothed and form a rosette close to the ground, above it's deep tap root. The toothed appearance of leaves gives rise to it’s name Dandelion, a corruption of French word dent-de-lion meaning lion’s tooth. 




    

Achenes blowing away

 Inflorescence is borne on a hollow, leafless stem called scape arising from the centre of leaves. Those yellow heads are not a single flower but a group of it. Each flower is called a floret. This inflorescence is called a capitulum and is the most highly evolved form of inflorescence. The flower heads then mature into seed heads comprising of many single seeded fruits called achenes. Each achene is attached to a tuft of hair at the top known as pappus. It acts like a parachute and helps the fruit to be carried away to long distances by wind. 

        

 

A close up of achenes with pappus

Though an invasive weed, it has long been used in herbal remedies due to its numerous medicinal properties and is also used for culinary purposes.