The Lemon Fool

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden dandelions.

I know - it doesn't have the same ring about it as the original. But why do most people love daffodils and hate dandelions? Admittedly they don't have much variety but they are pretty, aren't they? I recently admired a field full of yellow and white. And the transformation to seed head is amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ_QqtXoyQw

Just imagine if dandelions became fashionable and you had to go to the garden centre to buy a tray of seedlings.

Cinelli

Yes, and in times of expensive food, one can eat the leaves.

The nectar is good for bees... but like most successful wild flowers/weeds they suppress competition, in this case with their dense, spreading leaves. Not so good in the lawn or the flower beds.
Agree though that they look nice. Ditto buttercups in the field next door.

V8

cinelli wrote:But why do most people love daffodils and hate dandelions? Admittedly they don't have much variety but they are pretty, aren't they? I recently admired a field full of yellow and white. And the transformation to seed head is amazing.

Well, for a start there's the time scale. When a daffodil seeds, after maybe two months of flowering, it'll take five or six years before its offspring will flower in their turn. Probably within ten yards of their parent.

Whereas, when a dandelion goes to seed after perhaps one single week of yellow flowering, its airborne seed will travel a couple of miles - mostly onto the property of people who have a slightly less chaotic idea of what "having a garden" means.

And guess what, it'll be only 12 weeks before the newly-broadcast seed is ready to have offspring of its own in its new location - followed 12 weeks after that by the third generation, and then the fourth, and then the fifth.....

We live opposite an ancient churchyard, where well-meaning nutters periodically scatter expensive packets of wild flower meadow seeds upwind of our garden, and we never stop cursing the incursions of bloody yellow rattle. (Which is sown with the deliberate aim of making the ground less fertile.) Or ragwort, which will poison sheep and horses. Thanks for the thought, guys, whoever you are.

We can probably agree to differ with these people about what "nature" ought to look like. But by broadcasting their own choices of flora across the wind, they're wilfully imposing their preferences on other people. Which is not what democratic behaviour is supposed to be about, is it?

It's a small consolation that easily 90% of this intrusive seed falleth upon stony ground. And that many or most of the scatterers don't know enough about nature to rake the soil a bit, so as to generally improve its chances.

Harrumph.

BJ