I was waiting for the bus a few days back at one of those weird bus stops that's just a pole stuck in someone's front yard, and there was a whole colony of dandelions that had puffed up into their seeded form. As I kicked at them to make the seeds disperse (a childhood habit I will never not indulge), I was struck thinking about what a neat little evolutionary trick those seeds are. A gust of wind or a car whooshing past or someone like me sending them off to take over the next lawn. I think dandelions are sort of a triumph in that way, a plant so effortlessly adapted to the environments we've created. Maybe that's why we hate them so much, a jealousy of their ease of survival and proliferation.
I think that a lot of creatures we think of as annoying are kind of belligerent in a way I love - dandelions, geese, raccoons. They don’t respect our attempts at total domination of our environment, and I love that.
Absolutely love the research rabbit hole you went down on this one! I'm also intrigued by those "legends say..." and "ancient writers mention..." citations that don't include any actual sources, and I'm impressed by how far you went with trying to unravel this! Sorry it didn't lead to more solid sources.
My own contribution to dandelion wine? Even though I haven't tried it myself, dandelion wine is a thing where I come from. And so is Irish music ... thus, I offer this, in case you haven't heard it before. I like the association between dandelions and nostalgia in this song:
I was waiting for the bus a few days back at one of those weird bus stops that's just a pole stuck in someone's front yard, and there was a whole colony of dandelions that had puffed up into their seeded form. As I kicked at them to make the seeds disperse (a childhood habit I will never not indulge), I was struck thinking about what a neat little evolutionary trick those seeds are. A gust of wind or a car whooshing past or someone like me sending them off to take over the next lawn. I think dandelions are sort of a triumph in that way, a plant so effortlessly adapted to the environments we've created. Maybe that's why we hate them so much, a jealousy of their ease of survival and proliferation.
I think that a lot of creatures we think of as annoying are kind of belligerent in a way I love - dandelions, geese, raccoons. They don’t respect our attempts at total domination of our environment, and I love that.
Absolutely love the research rabbit hole you went down on this one! I'm also intrigued by those "legends say..." and "ancient writers mention..." citations that don't include any actual sources, and I'm impressed by how far you went with trying to unravel this! Sorry it didn't lead to more solid sources.
My own contribution to dandelion wine? Even though I haven't tried it myself, dandelion wine is a thing where I come from. And so is Irish music ... thus, I offer this, in case you haven't heard it before. I like the association between dandelions and nostalgia in this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4keHLmtYCs
How lovely! I love the metaphor of dandelion wine as the bottled memories of being younger and more carefree.