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Dandelion	Spring Bloom
	A riot of yellow

For a few days dandelions are rampant

It probably signals the ‘spring bloom’ in Hecate too – when the plankton ‘plants’ are at their maximum

For good intro and food/ herbal properties see this link

Thousand s of florets in each dandelion flower

Strange with all those flowers I saw no pollinators – no bees nor flies –

Strange too because superficial glance shows lots of pollen and nectar in the individual corolla tubes

Presumably all these reproduce asexually and are thus clones – finely adapted to PR weather

Search shows all Taraxacum officinale apomictic – the UK has 200 micro-species etc and best treated as an aggregate

Good labeled photo-micrograph of individual ray floret

Stigma (‘s’ on fig left ) pushes up thru corolla tube pushing pollen (p) etc before it – Each floret has 5 petals combined but still present as terminal ‘notches’ see left (5) – see these university sites for technical flower descriptive terms and higher magnification of floret and here is a photo of similar

	And then it is over
	In some places this stage is called swine’s snout or some such – and small migrating birds seem to relish picking it apart for a snack – seeds are achenes – see university level discussion and for the Sunflowers (Asteraceaea) good primer w lots figs

While I thought these images were ‘good’ – check out this NFLD page where similar at 800x 600

The seeds adapted to ‘blowing in the rain’ and have their own architectural type beauty

Created by LG on May/4/2005

Last updated on Sunday, May 15, 2005

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Spring Bloom

And then it is over

The seeds adapted to ‘blowing in the rain’ and have their own architectural type beauty